‘Fentanyl-induced homicide’ bill advances at S.C. State House

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) - One of South Carolina’s top prosecutors says illicit fentanyl is the most significant challenge law enforcement faces in this state and across the country.

Now he and the loved ones of fentanyl victims are calling for South Carolina to do more to hold the dealers of this deadly drug responsible.

Last year, a new law went into effect to crack down on those who traffic fentanyl in South Carolina.

Now lawmakers are looking to take another step and more than 20 other states where drug-induced homicide is a crime.

“Drug-induced homicide will be a tool for law enforcement to use to hold these people able for murder. We can no longer have a revolving door. We need to hold the drug dealers able for murder,” said Kat Orr with Izzy’s Army.

Orr is among the loved ones of South Carolinians who have died from fentanyl – who are now calling on lawmakers to do more to keep their numbers from growing.

They the age of a new law that would create the crime of fentanyl-induced homicide in South Carolina.

Under this bill, people could face up to 30 years in prison if they’re found to have delivered, dispensed, or provided fentanyl to a person who dies after injection, inhalation, absorption, or ingestion of any amount of the drug.

Creighton Waters, the head of the state grand jury under the Attorney General’s Office, says while the state already charges some accused fentanyl dealers with murder, this gives them a different kind of tool.

“While we’re very confident in the legal theory we have there, under a malignant heart of malice, we need more than just a sledgehammer. We need a scalpel, and we need an overdose bill to address that,” said Waters.

This bill has already ed in the Senate, and it now sits in the House Judiciary Committee.

It has about three weeks left to get through that committee and in the full House of Representatives or else it would have to be refiled again next year.

Some people worry this bill is too broad and could inadvertently criminalize someone who gives their friend or family member a pill that they don’t know contains fentanyl, and they die.

A House Judiciary subcommittee recently added language they say is intended to target drug dealers specifically to avoid situations like that.

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