Preordained Result

When we walked into my brother’s Hoboken apartment a little over a year ago, it looked like a crime scene. Dirty dishes piled up in the sink. Spots of blood on the floor. A shot glass and rolled-up dollar bill on the kitchen counter coated in white dust. But not quite enough of a crime scene for any of the seven detectives who’d been there before us. Approximately two hours after patrol officers doing a welfare check discovered my brother and his wife dead on the floor from an apparent drug overdose —in the midst of a fentanyl epidemic still killing thousands of people every year—every single one of those seven detectives had concluded no crime had occurred.

Without ever testing the small blue pill found at the scene that was identified as Oxycodone based on an internet search.

Without ever testing the white residue on the shot glass or rolled up dollar bill.

Without ever analyzing any of the cell phones or other electronic devices lying around the apartment in plain sight.

Without even taking the trouble to request the available video footage.

It can’t be a crime if you don’t look for any evidence.

Maybe the detectives didn’t bother to look for proof because, as the police report noted, numerous prescription bottles were found in the bedroom and on the kitchen counter. Maybe the sheer number of those bottles led the officers to, as they said, “believe[]” the white powder residue on the kitchen counter was “crushed up prescription pills.” Or maybe all the police could see were two more dead addicts, killed by the pain pills they couldn’t resist.

Not someone’s beloved daughter.

Not someone’s cherished baby brother.

Despite its focus on the prescription drugs, the police report failed to mention that the three prescription bottles found on the kitchen counter—which my lawyer brain somehow compelled me to photograph—were for Xanax and Ambien and an anti-inflammatory medicine, not Oxycodone. So, they couldn’t have been the source of the small blue pill found at the scene.

No one ever asked about the source of the small blue pill.

As it turned out, my brother and sister-in-law were killed by a mix of Ambien and fentanyl, not Oxy, a fact we didn’t learn until six months later when the medical examiner’s report was finally released. Six tortuous, heart-breaking months later. By which point it was way too late to start making a case against the dealer who’d sold the tainted blue pill.

Even though within two days of the bodies being discovered, my family and I had found the dealer’s name and phone number on a small index card in the apartment.

Even though within two weeks, we’d also found his picture, as well as months of text messages documenting their drug transactions, and records of the many, many Zelle payments he received from them.

Even though we eventually put together the series of texts the dealer exchanged with my brother and his wife on the day they died—including the final text which read: “Outside.”

When we found the dealer’s contact information, we immediately called the police to warn them about this person selling a potentially deadly batch of drugs. We didn’t want anyone else to get killed or another family to have to endure what we were going through. But the woman who answered the phone wouldn’t put us through. Even after we asked for each of the officers listed on the police report by name. Even after we explained the purpose of our call.

“It’s a holiday weekend,” she said. “You’ll have to call back on Tuesday.”

New Jersey is a so-called “strict liability” state, with a “drug-induced death” law that theoretically makes it easier to bring criminal charges against people who provide, sell, or distribute controlled substances that, once ingested, result in the death of the user. “Easier,” but still not easy. Under the statute the government still has to prove that the person charged actually provided the drug and that its ingestion caused the death of the victim. Even so, concerns have been raised about the law’s potential overreach since it extends to family members or friends who might have unknowingly provided the substance that led to a fatality. The ACLU has also argued drug-induced death laws like New Jersey’s do nothing to address the overdose crisis and actually deter people from seeking help.

New Jersey’s law may very well be flawed; I’m not expert enough to know. It was enacted as part of the Comprehensive Drug Reform Act of 1987, after W. Cary Edwards, then New Jersey’s Attorney General, was tasked with devising a strategy to combat “the scourge of drugs” in the state. According to Edwards, the Act was intended to “provide[] police, prosecutors and the courts with the tools necessary to wage an effective battle against drug traffickers.”

Almost forty years later, New Jersey appears no closer to winning its “war on drugs,” in some places anyway. Since in what would seem to have been a textbook case in which police in other counties would have at least considered whether the drug-induced death statute might apply, in my brother’s situation, no one seemed to have given it a moment’s thought.

What would it have taken for them to give it a moment’s thought?

We’ve been told that, despite all the information we gathered, at this point it would be very difficult to prosecute the dealer because there isn’t any video of the actual drug purchase and because my brother and his wife also had Ambien in their systems at the time they died. Putting aside that nothing in the drug-induced death statute requires videotape (which probably wasn’t widely available when the law was passed in 1987), the police never tried to find any, so the result of their “investigation” was preordained. And even though it seems likely that many people who overdose would have ingested a bunch of different substances, the medical examiner’s report regarding my brother didn’t make it clear that fentanyl—not some other drug—was the actual cause of death. The end result? A dangerous man remains free to prey on other desperate souls without even the inconvenience of a police interview.

When the detectives all flocked to my brother’s apartment, they were looking for signs of “foul play,” whatever that means. Perhaps that was the fundamental problem. The officers saw two people dead amidst obvious signs of drug use and drug addiction, without any obvious signs of a violent crime being committed. But, of course, the crime was the drugs, and whether because of limited financial resources or lack of manpower or simply lack of interest in the mundane task of pursuing an individual street dealer in a potentially challenging case, the police did nothing.

While prosecuting the dealer would do nothing to ease our sorrow, it would have felt significant to have the tragedy of what happened to my brother and sister-in-law officially recognized and to have their lives acknowledged as more than their worst, final moments. To show they weren’t just two more invisible victims on the long list of invisible victims in this endless so-called war. To not have their murders ignored.

It’s too late for our family to receive any kind of consolation from the criminal justice system. Other New Jersey victims and their loved ones deserve a lot better.