Manslaughter charges against alleged fentanyl dealers mount across Canada
Source: CBC Canada
Several forces and prosecutors across the country are now laying manslaughter charges against those who allegedly supplied fentanyl to people who overdosed and died.
Manslaughter charges against drug dealers came to prominence in the early 1980s when actor John Belushi died in California of a drug overdose. Canadian Cathy Smith was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in a plea deal after being prosecuted for second-degree murder. She injected Belushi with speedballs — heroin and cocaine — and it was the heroin that killed him.
In 1993, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld a manslaughter conviction against Marc Creighton, who provided and injected cocaine into a woman's arm with her consent. She began convulsing, went into cardiac arrest and choked to death on her own vomit.
"The law is clear that you do incur a liability for death resulting from your distribution of a drug," says Alan Young, a York University law professor. "That's because the mental state fault requirement for manslaughter is very low — the objective foreseeability of bodily harm, not even death."
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/fentanyl-manslaughter-dealers-overdose-death-1.4346539
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