Strict liability

TRENTON, N.J. — A Paterson, N.J., man and a Warwick couple have been charged with supplying the heroin that killed a Warwick man in April.
The arrests were announced by Acting New Jersey Attorney General Christopher S. Porrino in Trenton, N.J.
Charged with strict liability for a drug-induced death, a first-degree charge that carries a sentence of 10 to 20 years in New Jersey State prison, were:
Shameik Byrd, 26, of Paterson, N.J., aka “Homeboy.”
Anthony Potts, 27, of Warwick.
Noel Ferguson, 20, of Warwick.
Byrd was arrested on June 2. Potts and Ferguson were arrested early Wednesday evening at the home where both of them live.
The three are charged in connection with the death of Kean Cabral, 25, of Warwick. Cabral was found dead inside his home on the morning of April 3 as a result of a heroin overdose.

Working across state lines

The arrests stem from a joint investigation conducted with the New York Attorney General’s Organized Crime Task Force, the Warwick Police Department and the Passaic County, N.J., Sheriff’s Office.
The New York Attorney General’s Office had enlisted the aid of the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office in a prior case as a result of their existing partnership on the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic Heroin Task Force, a task force of state attorneys general that is promoting collaboration to fight heroin trafficking.
Through task force discussions, the New York prosecutors were aware of New Jersey’s strict liability statute and the potential to prosecute a drug dealer for a first-degree crime based on an overdose death.
In November, the New Jersey and New York Attorneys General announced the arrest of an alleged Paterson drug dealer, Shawn Flemmings, in the death of Stephen Ference in Warwick last year. The charges against Flemmings are pending.

April 3

Warwick police officers initiated this investigation on April 3 when they responded to Cabral’s home at approximately 8 a.m. on an emergency call after he was found unresponsive.
Cabral was found slumped over the end of a bed in his bedroom.
Officers found a syringe at the scene, along with eight glassine envelopes of suspected heroin stamped “Trap Queen” in red ink, and nine empty glassine envelopes with the same stamp.
Cabral was pronounced dead at the scene. The Orange County Medical Examiner determined that Cabral died of a heroin overdose.
Through their investigation, the Warwick Police developed information that Potts and Ferguson allegedly sold Cabral the heroin that caused his death and they had been traveling to Paterson to purchase heroin.

Three days later

The Warwick Police and the New York Attorney General’s Office – who had worked with the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office and the Passaic County Sheriff’s Office on the prior multi-state strict liability case – enlisted those New Jersey partners again to assist in the investigation.
Following an alert from the Warwick Police, detectives from the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice and the Passaic County Sheriff’s Office set up surveillance in Paterson on April 6 and allegedly observed Potts and Ferguson obtaining heroin in a hand-to-hand drug transaction on East 34th Street.
The detectives stopped the couple’s vehicle and Potts and Ferguson were arrested after Ferguson voluntarily turned over approximately 50 glassine envelopes of suspected heroin stamped “Trap Queen” in red ink.
Further investigation revealed that Potts and Ferguson allegedly sold multiple glassine envelopes of heroin stamped “Trap Queen” to Cabral on both April 1 and April 2, immediately prior to his death, and that they allegedly had obtained the heroin in Paterson from Byrd.
In addition to the first-degree charge of strict liability for drug-induced death, Byrd, Potts and Ferguson face third-degree charges of distribution of heroin and conspiracy to distribute heroin.
Potts and Ferguson are being held in jail in Orange County, pending extradition to New Jersey. Byrd is being held in the Passaic County Jail with bail set at $150,000.

What New York State needs to do

Warwick Police Chief Thomas McGovern Jr. said New York needs its own strict liability law.
“This is the second time in one year that a Warwick person was killed as a result of a heroin overdose that was laced with poison and through the work of Warwick narcotics officers and patrol officers, a case was developed that traced the source of the deadly substance backwards through the local connection to the source in Paterson, N.J.,” McGovern said in an email exchange with The Warwick Advertiser.
“This department will continue to communicate and cooperate with the State of New Jersey’s AG Office in conjunction with the NY AG investigators, to prosecute drug dealers that murder local people,” McGovern added. “ We can only hope that NY State will adopt similar ‘strict liability’ laws in the near future so that our own local prosecutors can become involved and take the appropriate and necessary action. My Orange County DA Office does a great job with our cases, but they have no avenue to attack the dealers. They are currently handcuffed by the absence of a similar statute in New York State.”
The strict liability law has been on the books in New Jersey since 1987. According to the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, from the law’s inception through October 2015, there have been 163 arrests on the charge, and 90 convictions.
In New York, a pair of companion bills pending in the state Legislature would create the crime of homicide by sale of an opiate controlled substance, which would make it a class A-1 felony, the same level offense as second-degree murder, to sell someone opioid drugs that kill them. The Senate bill is sponsored by Sen. George Amedore. Assemblyman James Skoufis, D-Woodbury, is a co-sponsor on the Assembly bill.