State Declined to Seek Review of Overdose Death Conviction Reversal
Like many states, Indiana passed a drug-induced homicide (DIH) statute in response to the opioid overdose epidemic. Indiana’s statute is unique, however. Unlike other DIH statutes, Indiana’s statute expressly excludes two defenses. First, it prohibits the defendant from claiming the user died as a result of voluntary use of the drug. Second, the statute prohibits the defendant from claiming the user died as a result of using the drug in combination with other substances. Even though some state statutes includes one of these excluded defenses, no other statute in the country excludes both defenses.
The legislative committee hearings held prior to the passage of Indiana’s DIH statute reveal that the Legislature excluded these defenses because they (incorrectly) believed it would be impossible for a prosecutor to obtain a conviction if the defendant could assert either of these defenses. In the vast majority of drug-induced homicides, the user voluntarily ingests the drug and usually does some in combination with other substances.
But did excluding these defenses lead to the opposite result — the State’s burden of proof in these cases is now too low? After all, legislators claimed they were seeking to punish high-level drug dealers (i.e., “kingpins”) for overdose deaths. Instead, all of the cases reported in Indiana involving the DIH statute seem to be low-level users who shared, traded, or dealt for no real profit their own drugs to acquaintances, who used the drugs and died.
Recently, the Court of Appeals of Indiana tackled the DIH statute head-on in Justin Yeary v. State. In Yeary, defense counsel raised numerous constitutional claims to the DIH statute, all of which the Court of Appeals rejected. But defense counsel also asked for the jury to be expressly instructed on the matter of causation as it related to the user’s death. In many of these cases, the factual dispute is not really whether the defendant dealt the drugs to the user. Rather, the dispute is usually over causation. This was true in Yeary’s case. Did the drug that was dealt actually cause the user to overdose and die?
Consider the elements of the statute the State is required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. After proving the defendant knowingly or intentionally delivered a controlled substance (to anyone, not just to the user), the State must also show that “when the controlled substance is used, injected, inhaled, absorbed, or ingested, [it] results in the death of a human being who used the controlled substance.” Ind. Code section 35-42-1-1.5(a).
In Indiana, causation includes both the actual cause of the death and the proximate cause of the death. In layman’s terms, the actual cause of the death is established by showing that, but for the act (the drug deal) the result (the death) would not have occurred. Proximate cause is established by showing the result (the death) was reasonably foreseeable given the defendant’s conduct (the drug deal).
Defense counsel in Yeary’s case believed the jury needed to be instructed on definition of actual cause and proximate cause, especially given the unique exclusion of the two defenses that were directly related to causation. The trial court disagreed and declined to instruct the jury. But the Court of Appeals held the following, “A lay person could reasonably, but erroneously, interpret [the jury instructions given on the elements of the DIH statute] to mean the State was only required to prove the victim’s death followed the drug sale because “result” and “follow” are synonyms.” Yeary v. State, slip op. at pg. 29. The Court of Appeals also held the failure to so instruct the jury was not harmless and, consequently, Yeary was entitled to a new trial.
The State had the opportunity to ask the Supreme Court of Indiana to review the case, but it declined to make such a request. Thus, for now, Yeary is good law and binding on Indiana trial courts.