Westmoreland leads region in fatal overdose prosecutions

Carmen Capozzi knows all too well the horrors associated with drug addiction.

For three days in 2015, he sat quietly in a Westmoreland County courtroom and watched the trial of a Wilkinsburg man charged with selling his 20-year-old son a fatal dose of heroin three years earlier. Capozzi’s silence ended when he exploded with rage seconds after a jury returned a “not guilty” verdict.

That case was the first of 51 filed by District Attorney John Peck against drug dealers whose actions resulted in overdose deaths. According to statistics released Friday by the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, Westmoreland County ranks third in the state in the number of drug delivery resulting in death cases filed since 2015.

The state reported 871 cases were filed in Pennsylvania since 2015, resulting in 294 convictions. Westmoreland County ranks behind only York and Lancaster counties, where 100 and 99 cases of the felony charge have been filed.

“I think it’s an appropriate response,” Peck said. “I think, when there is a death and everyone sees that somebody is being prosecuted, it has an effect on drug dealers and traffickers. There are consequences.”

Drug delivery resulting in death is a charge originally on the books as a murder offense, but, in the mid-1990s, it was declared unconstitutional. An amended version of the charge was approved a decade ago by the state Legislature creating a new felony offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Since 2015, there have been 10 convictions on the charge in Westmoreland County. More than a dozen cases are pending, Peck said.

Convictions in Westmoreland lag behind seven others. Lancaster had 63 convictions since 2015; York had 23 and Dauphin had 20.

From 2009 through 2018, the number of overdose deaths in Westmoreland increased annually and reached nearly 200 three years ago. Overdose fatalities decreased to 115 last year and, through Sept. 1, just 77 deaths were recorded or suspected this year, according Coroner Ken Bacha.

Peck said those numbers prompted his office to actively prosecute drug dealers connected to fatal overdoses.

“Police have been aggressively investigating these cases. When you see text messages sent to victims in which they are touting the toxicity of these drugs, to let this go on was not appropriate,” Peck said.

State statistics indicate the charge has been prosecuted at different levels throughout the state, with counties in central Pennsylvania leading the pack. The state’s largest county, Philadelphia, saw just 13 cases and seven convictions. In Allegheny, just 19 cases were filed, resulting in four convictions.

Mike Manko, spokesman for Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala, said training of police departments started in 2017 for a new protocol in which every fatal overdose was to be investigated as a potential homicide. Each overdose death investigation undergoes a review process before deciding if charges are warranted, Manko said.

“District Attorney Zappala has always looked at the sale and trafficking of drugs as one of the most dangerous actions that can take place because its impacts go far beyond those directly involved to include the families of the victims and defendants and the community as a whole,” Manko said in an email.

Since his son’s death, Capozzi formed Sage’s Army, a North Huntingdon-based anti-drug advocacy and support group. He said those efforts have given him a new perspective on the ongoing overdose epidemic.

Now, five years after he stormed out of a courtroom spewing expletives at the man accused and acquitted of selling his son drugs, he said he’s no longer convinced that filing the drug delivery resulting in death charge is the best way to tackle the sale of illegal drugs.

“I don’t see it getting drugs off the street. There’s another way to get drugs off the street but our government doesn’t want to do that, to keep it from coming into our country,” Capozzi said. “I think filing charges might help families of someone who dies to give them closure, but it only puts a notch on the district attorney’s belt and it’s not stopping the problem.”