GIRL KILLED BY MDMA...OR DID THE WAR ON DRUGS MURDER HER?
PILL CLINTON
never happens in america)
Danielle McCarthy was like a lot of 16-year-olds. She wore Hollister-
brand clothes, worked at Orange Julius at the mall, and attended one of
those giant suburban high schools. Until December 2006, she'd never
taken ecstasy. But she knew plenty of people at Rogers High School in
Puyallup, Washington, who had used it, including Donalydia Huertas, a
fellow junior.
Danielle and her school buddy Kelsey Kerston thought ecstasy was
dangerousó"you can die on the first try," Danielle and Kelsey agreedóbut
at some point, without telling Kelsey, Danielle changed her mind. With
New Year's Eve approaching, Danielle decided to spend $50 she had saved
for a navel piercing on ecstasy instead. Kelsey would be with them on
New Year's Eve, but Kelsey wasn't supposed to know that Danielle and
Dona were high.
At 8:00 p.m. on December 31, the girls met at Dona's house. Photos from
a digital camera show them posing, puckering, and gussying themselves up
in front of a vanity mirror. Two cars full of friends arrived to pick
the girls up at 9:00 p.m. and take them to a house party in Edmonds.
David Morris, a 20-year-old friend of Dona's, drove a Jeep that had room
for just two passengers. Dona and Danielle rode in the Jeep. Kelsey rode
in another vehicleóthroughout the night Kelsey was the odd girl out.
The red Cherokee drove north on I-5. David handed over pills of ecstasy
to Dona, and Dona handed him cash. Both girls took a pill.
The two cars arrived in Edmonds about an hour later. Ryan Mills, 19
years old, was hosting a New Year's Eve party at his mother's house.
Mills's mother was away. Inside, about 18 people in their late teens and
early 20s were smoking pot and drinking. Danielle opened a can of beer,
but Dona warned her not to drinkóalcohol and ecstasy are a bad
combination, she said. Danielle chugged it anyway. Kelsey was drinking
shots of Vox vodka.
Less than an hour later, still before midnight, about eight of the
revelers decided to leave for a party in Seattle's University District.
On the way, the cars stopped at a gas station to rendezvous with a
friend whose clutch had burned out on the freeway. Danielle told Dona
that the ecstasy "wasn't kicking in." Dona and Danielle both took
another pill. The New Year arrived as they sat in the parking lot.
When they reached the party on Greek Row, Danielle got out of the car
and immediately became ill, vomiting again and again. She urinated on
herself. David and Dona cleaned her up and took care of her. Guys in the
group returned periodically, one with a bottle of Aquafina, but Danielle
couldn't hold down water. Dona assured friends that Danielle was fine,
insisting she just had too much to drink.
At 3:30 a.m., the frat-row parties died down. Danielle slumped with her
head down on the drive back in the Jeep. Back in Edmonds, Dona and David
helped Danielle walk back into Ryan Mills's house. Danielle was still
somewhat coherent but she was slipping in and out of consciousness,
periodically waking up to vomit. If there was any suspicion that
Danielle was having a bad reaction to the ecstasy or that something else
was seriously wrong, what happened next should have confirmed it: At
around 4:00 a.m. Danielle tensed up. She began to shake. She looked like
she was having a seizure.
Nobody called 911.
Danielle's seizure lasted about five minutes, and after it ended she
appeared to fall asleep. Other people began going to sleep in various
rooms of the house. Some members of the group said they woke up at 6:30
a.m., but others claimed it wasn't until 8:30 a.m. that Ryan Mills
started dinging a cowbell to wake the group. Danielle looked terrible.
Her face was cold to the touch; her lips were blue. So, once again, the
group had to make a decision. They could call 911, they could drive
Danielle to the hospital, or they could take matters into their own
hands.
Some guys carried Danielle to a tub they had filled with warm water,
where Dona splashed water on Danielle's face. But Danielle was
unresponsive. After 15 minutes, one of them lifted Danielle's arm and
let go. Instead of relaxing, Danielle's muscles stiffened and her hand
hardened into a cup. Everyone panicked.
But they still didn't call 911.
Ryan Mills, the host of the party, went online and found Danielle's
symptoms were consistent with an ecstasy overdose. But Ryan didn't want
anyone to call 911. "We were all scared because we had, like, a party
there the night before," Mills would later tell investigators. "We
didn't want anyone to get in trouble." Most of the people at the house
had taken ecstasy, and at this point David and Dona were admitting that
Danielle had, too. Calling 911 guaranteed that they would be arrested.
So, instead, David and Dona wrapped Danielle in a comforter, hoisted her
into the Cherokee, and drove her to Stevens Hospital. They carried her
into the emergency room. At 9:43 a.m.ónearly eight hours after
Danielle's first symptoms, and five and a half hours after the apparent
seizureóa doctor reported that her body was cold to the touch. Her jaw
was already set in rigor mortis.
That is how 16-year-old Danielle Dawn McCarthy died, on New Year's Day
2007, according to records at the Snohomish County Superior
Courtórecords that charge David Morris and Donalydia Huertas with
homicide.
In Washington, when a person dies from taking an illegal drug, the
individual who supplied the drug has committed "controlled-substances
homicide," according to a law passed in 1987. It's the equivalent of
holding a gun dealer liable if someone shoots himself.
"It was clear who gave her the drugs and who sold her the drugs," said
Deputy Prosecutor Coleen St. Clair of the Snohomish County Superior
Court, who is handling the case.
A detective interviewing David Morris on New Year's Day had ascertained
that he'd sold Dona and Danielle the ecstasy and placed him under
arrest. But Dona, who gave Danielle the drugs, and was just 17 at the
time, wasn't charged until May 2007.
The penalty for administering a lethal dose of a drug is usually 51 to
68 months in prison for adults. The penalty for juveniles is typically a
month in jail.
"[Huertas] was made a plea offer [in juvenile court] and she rejected
it," said St. Clair, "and if you don't accept the state's plea you'll be
charged with what you should have been charged with to begin with."
Huertas is now charged with manslaughter in the first degreeóin adult
courtóin addition to the drug-homicide charge. If she's found guilty,
Dona Huertas could be sent to prison for six and a half to eight and a
half years.
"The difference is the controlled-substances homicide is a strict
liability crime," St. Clair said, but the first-degree manslaughter
charge is reserved for reckless disregard. To demonstrate Dona's
disregard, an affidavit pieces together an account of the night's events
to argue that Dona repeatedly rejected efforts to save Danielle.
The most damning evidence is about a dozen quotes attributed to Dona
over the evening by Danielle's friend Kelsey Kerston, who recounted the
night's events, with her father by her side, to a King County detective.
"Please don't let me die," Danielle begged while vomiting next to the
car, according to Kelsey. When Kelsey offered to help, Dona allegedly
told her, "Shut the fuck up and get the fuck away.... Danielle doesn't
need your help. There's nothing wrong with her.... Stop asking and shut
the fuck up, and get the fuck out of here." When Kelsey demanded to know
whether Danielle had taken drugs, Dona allegedly barked, "Shut the fuck
up. She's not on anything."
Incriminating detailsóbut this is Kelsey's version of events, and the
rest of her story doesn't match those provided by other witnesses.
For example, while Kelsey went inside one of the parties on Greek Row,
Dona and David tended to Danielleóby the account of a half-dozen
witnessesófor nearly three hours. But when the detective asked Kelsey
how long the group was in the University District, Kelsey insisted they
were only on Greek Row for 20 to 25 minutes, "and then we went straight
back to Ryan Mills's house." The detective also asked about the car ride
to Seattle.
DETECTIVE: "Anything happen between the party [in Edmonds] and getting
to [the party in the University District]? I mean, as far as stopping
anywhere, anything like that?"
KELSEY KERSTON: "Um-um."
DETECTIVE: "Somebody's car break down?"
KELSEY KERSTON: "No."
DETECTIVE: "No?"
KELSEY KERSTON: "Um-um."
...
DETECTIVE: "So you left [Edmonds] at 11:30, let's say, so you got there
and you already went to the gas station according to what you're
saying."
KELSEY KERSTON: "I just, I shouldn't like, I should not have drink
[sic], that's all I'm saying."
...
DETECTIVE: "Okay. So that'd be two and a half, three hours."
KELSEY KERSTON: "We were not there that long."
DETECTIVE: "Okay."
KELSEY KERSTON: "We weren't."
Kelsey forgot spending a significant amount of time at a gas station and
appears to have lost track of about three hours that night, and excuses
the lapses by explaining she "shouldn't have drink." And Dona, on
ecstasy, is alleged to have screamed expletives at Kelsey. (The drug,
methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA, overwhelms the user with such
intense feelings of love and happiness that the drug was recently
approved federally for clinical trials to treat post-traumatic stress
disorder.) Nevertheless, prosecutors used Kelsey's account of the night
to make their case in an affidavit of probable cause.
None of the holes in the case excuses Dona, David, Kelsey, or anyone
else in the group for failing to call 911. But despite an entire group's
failure to respond, the charges brought against two individuals rely
heavily on the testimony of one personówhose accounts of the evening are
spotty. (I called Kelsey Kerston, but her mother refused to let me speak
with her. I also spoke to Danielle's parents; they agreed to meet for an
interview and then cancelled. David Morris' attorney said he could not
answer questions about the case. And Dona Huertas' attorney did not
return my calls.)
On November 30, 2007, David made a plea agreement with prosecutors,
agreeing to testify against Dona in exchange for a shorter sentence. The
deal may seem odd, because everyone saw that Danielle was seriously ill,
knew she had taken ecstasy, and didn't call for help. And Danielle,
according to Kelsey, even asked people not to let her mom find out. So
everyone at the party bears some responsibility for what happened that
night.
But pinning the blame on a single participantówith all parties
testifying against that one defendant, who is left with no one else to
snitch onóis a classic drug-law enforcement technique. And,
characteristic of drug enforcement's racial disparity in prosecutions,
the person who stands to serve the harshest penalty is the only non-
Caucasian directly involved in the case, Dona Huertas.
Huertas is currently free on bail; her trial begins in Snohomish County
Superior Court on January 25.
"This is a hot charge right now," says Douglas Hiatt, a criminal defense
attorney defending a client facing similar accusations in Lewis County.
A recent flourish of newspaper articles indicates rising popularity for
the controlled-substance-homicide charge among Washington prosecutors.
(The state attorney general's office failed to respond to my requests
for records related to the number of charges and prosecutions.) In a
similar case in Clark County, just across the Columbia River from
Portland, 19-year-old Stetzon W. Sharp reportedly supplied a 15-year-old
girl with ecstasy at a party in his apartment. After the girl complained
she was too warm, partygoers rushed her to a hospitalómuch quicker to
act than Danielle's friendsóbut brain swelling and seizures took her
life within a couple hours. A Clark County judge sentenced Sharp to more
than eight years in prison.
In every fatal overdose case, the drugs came from someone. But as the
prosecutor, St. Clair, explained, the controlled-substance-homicide
charge is uncommon because in most cases the overdose victim is "alone
when they were found so you can't make that connection" to the supplier.
But instead of preventing overdose deaths, prosecutions like these may
result in more deaths. The state of Washington's position is clear: If
someone calls 911 when a friend is overdosing, not only does the witness
risk charges for possessing or selling drugs (which 911 callers in these
situations have feared since the passage of the Controlled Substances
Act), but he or she could be charged with homicide, too. The end result?
Overdose victimsówho might survive with prompt medical careómay be
abandoned and left to die.
"It goes in the wrong direction and cuts against overdose prevention,
overdose reporting, and taking someone to the hospital," says defense
attorney Hiatt. "If I give you the drugs, I'll be less likely to take
you to the hospital."
I can relate. When I was 17, a friend who had taken five hits of LSD
showed up at my house during a small party. He misheard a conversation
and believed we thought he was gay. He began to worry that his
attraction to women was a charadeóit wasn'tóand then spiraled into an
acid-induced state of terror. He began babbling like R2-D2, holding his
breath until his head looked like a plum, and trying to claw out his
eyes. I called 911.
A fleet of screaming ambulances and police cars arrived at my parents'
house. I didn't think twice about opening the door and directing them to
my deranged shell of a friend. But no sooner had they crossed the
threshold than a cadre of police officers escorted me to the basement,
where they handcuffed me to a chair. Officers interrogated me for hours,
threatening to search my house. (My parents are out of town so I can't
give you permission, officer, and besides, there's no acid at the house,
nope, and he took it before he arrived, yup.) The officers finally left,
but not until midmorning. My wrists were bruised from the cuffs and I've
never looked at a police officer quite the same way again.
I spent the next couple of months explaining to my scowling parents and
suspicious neighbors that I did the right thing: I called 911 when a
friend overdosed. But I ended up being treated like a criminal.
"I read a story about four or five years ago about a drug overdose
downtown," says Adam Kline, state senator of Washington's 37th District
(around Seattle's Mount Baker neighborhood). "People stood around
watching; nobody dared call the cops, and the guy died on the street,"
says Kline. "I imagine the very rational fear of arrest. It has got to
cloud people's judgment."
Monte Levine, a member of the Kitsap County Substance Abuse Advisory
Board, says, "There is a balance of weighing personal fear over doing
what is right and humane." A woman near Levine's Bremerton home had that
fear become reality: "A person was overdosing and she called to save the
person's life," he says. "She was arrested."
When mothers abandon their unwanted newbornsówhich happens with alarming
frequencyóthey must decide whether to leave an infant in a Dumpster,
where the child is likely to die, or in a public place, where the
child's likelihood of survival is higher but so are the chances that the
mother will be seen by witnesses, arrested, and prosecuted. The pandemic
of abandoned newborns in the 1990s spawned a popular movement to declare
emergency rooms and other medical facilities "safe havens" where mothers
could abandon newborns without risking arrest. In 2002, the Washington
State Legislature passed such a law.
A law that encourages people to call 911 when someone is overdosing
would be grounded in the same impulse: It's better to save lives than to
prosecute every crime. But saving the lives of newborn babies is an easy
sell and saving the lives of drug users is not.
But a life is a life to Senator Kline, who introduced legislation that
would provide amnesty to people who call 911 to report an overdose. The
bill, first introduced in 2005 and reintroduced in 2007 (remaining
active in the 2008 session), states, "A person shall not be charged,
subject to civil forfeiture, or otherwise prosecuted for a [drug
offense] if... the person reported the drug overdose to law enforcement
or summoned medical assistance at the time it was witnessed...."
But the bill, SB 5348, includes two exceptions: The bill stipulates that
people can still be prosecuted in cases where the person who reported
the overdose sold the drugs to the victim or in cases where the victim
dies and controlled-substance-homicide charges result.
Those exceptions undermine the bill's intent. Taking drugs is often
communal, and buying them is also a group activity, where one person
obtains the drugs from a dealer and others reimburse that person for the
cost of the drugs, but no profit is made on this second "sale." To
complicate matters, the bill applies only to cases where the person
reporting the overdose believes there is a threat to the victim's life.
So, basically, witnesses have to wait until they're certain that the
overdosing person is dying before they call 911óand if the person does
die, the proposed law offers no protection.
Kline concedes the bill has flaws, but believes the concessions are
necessary if the bill, which in its three years has never reached a
floor vote in the state senate, is to become law in 2008. "In a perfect
world," says Kline, "there would be an absolute privilege to call the
cops or the medics when there is an imminent threat on the life of a
human being, and there would be no exceptions." But it isn't a perfect
world, or a perfect legislature, so Kline says the exceptions are
necessary.
But if Kline's bill were to become law, would drug users understand the
specific circumstances under which they would have immunity? Let's say
another man is dying of a drug overdose on a downtown street. Would the
people watching even know of the law? And if they did, would they know
that the law's protections were ambiguous and assume that first-
responding officers would construe the law narrowly, and choose not to
call 911?
In New Mexico, drug users know about a "Good Samaritan" law enacted
there this Juneóthe first of its kind to become lawóbut "they think it's
a joke," says Reena Szczepanski, director of the Drug Policy Alliance's
New Mexico office, one of the legislation's backers. "They think the DEA
will try to get around it."
Szczepanski says the New Mexico Department of Health distributes palm-
sized cards to drug users about the limitations of immunity. One side
explains that people calling 911 for overdose victims won't be arrested
for drug possession; the other says there are no protections from
charges for drug dealing, outstanding warrants, or parole or probation
violations. In cases where people have called 911 to report an overdose
in New Mexico, "police have arrived before the ambulances," says
Szczepanski, and "put everyone on the floor to secure the scene while
their friend is dying on the floor."
What message do these heavy-handed tactics send?
"Don't even try saving your friend's life," says Szczepanski, "we're
going to arrest you."
It may have been easy to save Danielle McCarthy's life. "MDMA use in
sufficient dose or under the right circumstances can be fatal, but that
is very rare," explains Dr. Thomas Martin, of the Washington Poison
Center and an associate professor at the University of Washington. "An
overdose from two pills is very unlikely."
According to a statement issued February 5, the Snohomish County Medical
Examiner's Office ruled that Danielle's official cause of death was
acute intoxication of ecstasy. But McCarthy's toxicology report
indicates she had a postmortem concentration of only 0.31 milligrams of
MDMA per liter of blood. Although a handful of fatalities with MDMA in
that concentration have been reported, that dose is generally considered
nontoxic. (Other MDMA users have been documented with 20 times the
concentration of MDMA found in Danielle's bloodóand they exhibited only
a hangover and hypertension.)
Danielle's toxicology report also showed slight presence of MDA, a drug
very similar to MDMA, and caffeine. This indicates the pills she
consumed were not completely pure, which, in pills sold as ecstasy, is
very common.
But unreleased portions of Danielle's toxicology report reveal something
unusual: a high level of ketones, acids produced by the body when it
breaks down fat for energy, and glucose at 500 milligrams per deciliter
in Danielle's urine. (Information regarding the toxicology report was
provided to The Stranger by a confidential source.)
If this information is accurate, Danielle McCarthy may have been
suffering from undiagnosed diabetes. "This presentation of a very high
glucose level and high levels of ketones could have been due to a
complication of undiagnosed diabetes known as diabetic ketoacidosis,"
says Martin.
Ketoacidosis causes nausea and vomiting and can induce a diabetic
comaóthe same symptoms reportedly exhibited by Danielle on the night she
died. If Danielle had been taken to a hospital, these symptoms could
have been treated quickly; regulating her blood sugar and providing
other basic medical treatment could have saved her life.
"I think that it is only apparent that MDMA use preceded a downward
spiral that led to her death but didn't necessarily cause or contribute
to it," Martin says. However, he notes, "if she did have a seizure, that
is less common in DKA [diabetic ketoacidosis] and more common with MDMA
toxicity."
The extent to which MDMA is actually toxic has been the source of
controversy. George Ricaurte of Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine and colleagues concluded in 2002 that the drug causes severe
neurotoxicity. Users are virtually guaranteed, the scientist reported,
to develop Parkinson's disease or similar nervous-system conditions as
they age. However, the findings, after being widely accepted, were
dismissed the next year. Ricaurte admitted the researchers accidentally
injected primate test subjects with methamphetamine, not ecstasy, after
two labels on the bottles were switched.
In the vast majority of ecstasy-related fatalities, it is not toxicity
that kills the victims, but complications, such as heatstroke,
dehydration, or, as may have been the case with Danielle, the drug
triggering a preexisting medical condition.
"Some patients tolerate a certain level well; others don't," says
William T. Hurley, MD, of the Washington Poison Center. "Anyone with a
challenged reserve, due to a disease like untreated diabetes, would do
less well with MDMA toxicity."
If Danielle was an undiagnosed diabetic, other drugsóeven legal ones,
such as diet Red Bull or pseudoephedrineócould have triggered her
downward spiral. She may have started down the same physiological path
of lightheadedness, nausea, and ketoacidosis. In any of these other
scenarios, however, Danielle or someone around her would almost
certainly have called 911.
Everyone likes to believe they would immediately call 911 if they
witnessed an overdose. But the fact is, the fear of being arrested and
sent to prison for 5 to 10 years could make even the most compassionate
person take pause. Is the person actually that sick? What if he is just
passed out... would he want to wake up under arrest in a hospital room?
If I call 911, what will happen to all the people at this partyówill
they be sent to prison because of my phone call? These ramifications may
vex a reasonable personóand certainly one who is high and panicked.
If I had known as a teenager what I know now about how Washington's law
enforcement handles overdoses, and how the police would treat me, in
this situation I probably would have disposed of any evidence that could
be used against me, my friends, or my tripping friend before I called
for help. But that time would also waste precious minutes, delaying
treatment, all to avoid a potential criminal prosecution.
It was the fear of criminal prosecution that prevented Danielle's
friends from doing the right thing and saving her life on that New
Year's Day. The negligence of her friends, ecstasy, possibly undiagnosed
diabetes, and strictly punitive drug policies all conspired to kill
Danielle McCarthy.
But only Donalydia Huertas is on trial.
--
Rob Cypher bal...@aol.com
robcypher.livejournal.com
YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED - RESISTANCE IS FUTILE