An elderly drug dealer was sentenced on Tuesday to 2 and a half years in prison in connection with the overdose death of actor Michael K. Williams.
Carlos Macci, who is 72, was among four men arrested on drug trafficking charges tied to the death of Williams, who was best known for his role as the feared stickup man Omar Little in HBO’s “The Wire.”
Macci was sentenced to 30 months in prison, plus three years of supervised release, with the first year in an inpatient drug treatment facility.
Williams, 54, died in September 2021 after consuming heroin laced with fentanyl. The previous day, he purchased the drugs from a member of Macci’s crew in Brooklyn. The exchange was caught on surveillance video and described by New York federal prosecutors in court filings.
Macci and the three other defendants continued selling the batch of fentanyl-laced heroin even after Williams’ fatal overdose made headlines, according to prosecutors.
Macci pleaded guilty in April to possessing and distributing narcotics.
His lawyer, Benjamin Zeman, requested a sentence of time served citing Macci’s advanced age and his hardscrabble background. He dropped out of school in the second grade, never learned to read and write and has struggled with drug addiction for most of his life, Zeman said in court filings.
“Prior to his involvement in this crime, Carlos Macci had lived an unstable and aimless, drug fueled life,” Zeman wrote in a sentencing memo. “He has been as much of a victim of the failed war on drugs as anyone. But we must also try to imagine an end of his story that is shrouded in hope.”
New York federal prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Macci to at least four years to “reflect the seriousness of the offense” and “deter future criminal conduct of this defendant and others who could sell deadly narcotics in the community.”
David Simon, co-creator of “The Wire,” submitted a three-page letter to the judge seeking mercy for Macci. Simon had a close relationship with Williams, who was open about his struggles with addiction.
“No possible good can come from incarcerating a (72-year-old) soul, largely illiterate, who has himself struggled with a lifetime of addiction and who has not engaged in street-level sales of narcotics with ambitions of success and profit but rather as someone caught up in the diaspora of addiction himself,” Simon wrote.
“Michael would look at Mr. Macci and hope against hope that this moment in which he finds himself might prove redemptive, that his remaining years might amount to something more, and that by the grace of love and leniency, something humane and worthy might be rescued from the tragedy.”
This is a developing story, please check back for updates.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
