MURDER BY DRUG DEALING CHARGE REVIVING

Prosecutors Turn To Little-Known Law

When a jury determined earlier this year that Jake Johnson had been
murdered, it had seen no weapon. Prosecutors didn't even try to
establish intent, and they conceded the victim played a key role in
his own death.

Yet the second-degree murder conviction brought the killer the same
mandatory life-without-parole sentence handed out routinely to
shooters and stabbers. All prosecutors had to establish was that
defendant Jeanie Hano, 42, had sold methadone to the 16-year-old
victim and that the same pills contributed to his death by overdose.

The conviction in Covington came 18 years after then-state Sen.
William Jefferson tacked on a little-noticed amendment to the state's
second-degree murder statute, creating a new category of murderer:
dealers who peddle deadly drugs.

The obscure statute had been all but ignored by law enforcement
before Johnson's death, which resulted in the only known conviction
under the statute. But a Kenner woman booked last week in the
overdose death of her twin sister joins the recently growing list of
defendants arrested under the murder-by-drug-dealing law.

With two similar cases awaiting trial in St. Tammany Parish, and
Baton Rouge prosecutors securing two lesser convictions in another
overdose-as-murder case, police and lawyers have in the past year
given the statute the most attention it has received since it was
enacted in 1987. Nevertheless, those who investigate these deaths and
lawyers who defend the accused dealers predict that prosecutions
under the law will never represent more than a sliver of the state's
fatal overdoses.

Police predict convictions will remain low. They say it's often
extremely difficult to prove the connection between an overdose
victim, the drug that killed him and the person who sold or gave him
the substance.

But defense lawyers contend potential juries are responsible for the
law's limited exposure in Louisiana courts. They predict jurors are
less likely to hand down a murder conviction for an illegal drug sale
than they would for a cold-blooded killing.

Take the case of Shannon Morvant, 19, a Nicholls State University
student who was found dead in a friend's car Dec. 19, 2004, after a
night of partying.

Lafourche Parish sheriff's investigators alleged that Hardy Ledet,
19, had likely passed out quadruple-strength Xanax pills at the
party, and they geared up for an arrest under the second-degree
murder statute. They interviewed more than 50 people and awaited a
coroner's report to make the law's required link between a seller and
the drug determined to be the cause of death.

"We literally uncovered every conceivable stone that existed,"
Sheriff Craig Webre said.

Unable To Use Charge

Yet the toxicology report revealed fatal levels of Clozapine, a
powerful treatment for schizophrenia and a drug not found in the
state's list of controlled dangerous substances. Unable to bring the
murder charge against Ledet, prosecutors could do little more than
have his three-year probation from a previous drug charge revoked.

"This is the real tragedy, beyond the loss of Shannon Morvant, is
that Hardy Ledet in my estimation should be spending the rest of his
life incarcerated," Webre said. "He was offering drugs to anyone and
everyone, and providing them chemicals that were being misrepresented
and having an indifferent attitude about it."

Beyond the difficulty of investigating murder-by-drug-dealing, the
cases face challenges once they enter a courtroom, especially when
the line blurs between the overdose victim and the alleged perpetrator.

In February, Baton Rouge prosecutors brought Heather Smith, 26, to
trial on second-degree murder charges in the Aug. 25, 2001, death of
her best friend, Marsha Fisher, 32. Both women wanted to purchase
Ecstasy, but Fisher couldn't cash her paycheck that night. Randall
Corbett, 34, Fisher's boyfriend, cashed his own check and gave Smith
$255 to buy 15 tablets, according to court records. Hours later, he
found Fisher dead in her bedroom.

Prosecutor Darwin Miller said Smith's actions to buy the drugs, then
deliver them to Fisher's apartment, fit the murder statute. He said
Corbett's actions of distributing some of the pills to Fisher also
amounted to homicide.

When jury selection began in Smith's case, potential jurors struggled
with the law that turned a consensual night of drug use into murder.

"You should have heard one of the ladies on the jury," said defense
attorney Francis "Bo" Rougeou. "She says, 'You mean to tell me this
lady took these drugs on her own?' Yes. 'Nobody forced them down her
throat?' No. 'And she died?' Yes. 'So why are we here?' "

The woman ended up on the jury. But Rougeou never learned how the
panel would have decided the case. Smith took a 10-year plea deal
midway through the trial. "She said, 'I could do this much time, but
I can't do life,' " Rougeou said.

At Corbett's trial in October, jurors convicted him of the lesser
charges of negligent homicide and possession with intent to deliver
Ecstasy. A judge sentenced him to five years in prison.

Miller conceded that the biggest challenge to prosecuting
murder-by-drug-dealing is jury nullification, when jurors don't
follow the law because they disagree with it.

"The victim in my case actively desired to take the drug that
ultimately caused her death," Miller said. "She wanted it. She wanted
to buy it. She just couldn't cash a check. . . . This isn't a
situation where the victim didn't know she was being drugged."

A Matter Of Perspective

Eric Sterling, founder of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation,
said the quandary jurors grapple with in these cases is the result of
state and federal legislators racing in the 1980s to elevate drug
crimes to the status of violent crimes. He said that from a criminal
justice perspective, most drug sales that result in overdoses don't
compare to cold-blooded killings.

"Is the seller at fault for selling something that the buyer knows is
risky to ingest?" Sterling said. "They have to take the action of
seeking it out and buying it and ingesting it."

What sets the sole conviction in St. Tammany apart from the scant
other overdose deaths prosecuted under Louisiana's murder statute is
Jake Johnson's age, 16.

Chad Falgout, 37, whom police said initiated the methadone sale to
the teen, accepted a plea bargain in September to avoid following his
former girlfriend, Hano, to prison for life. A judge sentenced him to
15 years for manslaughter, which First Assistant District Attorney
Houston Gascon said his office accepted, given the greater difficulty
connecting Falgout to the methadone that plunged Johnson into a coma
from which he never recovered.

Sterling said that, as in other murder cases, the victim's identity
plays a powerful role in what charges are brought and what sentences
are sought.

"Overdose deaths are often not sympathetic cases to bring, because
very often the victims are longtime drug users who are looked down
upon by police and prosecutors," Sterling said. "But teenagers taking
pills, dying in the flower of their youth, are much more sympathetic."

With both prosecutions in the Fisher death concluded, even Miller
conceded that the Baton Rouge case had a finer moral line than
Johnson's methadone overdose.

"You certainly have a profiteer in that case," Miller said. "You've
got somebody who's acting on greed, who's taking advantage of someone
who has a weakness . . . making a poor decision."

Twin Faces Charge

But when Jefferson Parish jurors consider the Kenner murder case,
they'll have to grapple with perhaps the toughest decision of all
when sorting out sympathy for the victim or the defendant.

Kenner police said Rebecca A. Doussan, 26, violated the
murder-by-drug-dealing law on Dec. 6, 2004, after injecting cocaine
with her twin, Rachel Smith. Police said Doussan sought out more
cocaine from a drug supplier the same night, gave the drugs to her
sister and left her in an apartment alone. The next morning, Doussan
found Smith dead, submerged in a bathtub behind a locked bathroom door.

Police also issued an arrest warrant for Joseph Michael Bruno II, 42,
alleged to be the cocaine supplier, who faces second-degree murder charges.

To Jessica Dabdoub, 30, the victim and defendant are equals: both
sisters taken out of her life. Unlike most families of violent crime
victims, Dabdoub's relatives have no plans to support prosecutors' efforts.

"Even if it wasn't my sister, she chose what she did," Dabdoub said
of her deceased younger sister. "None of us blame Rebecca."