Just about every state in America has cracked down on fentanyl distribution, by stepping up arrests and increasing prison sentences.
But few places are as aggressive as Riverside County, Calif., in prosecuting people who supply fatal does of fentanyl.
Since late 2021, the Riverside County district attorney, Mike Hestrin, has charged 34 suspected fentanyl suppliers with murder and is said to be the first prosecutor in California to achieve a guilty verdict from a jury in a fentanyl-related homicide trial.
Riverside County has a reputation for aggressively prosecuting crimes (a “prosecutor’s paradise,” one local defense lawyer calls it).
And like Riverside, some other counties — like San Diego and Placer, near Sacramento — that have also brought murder charges against fentanyl suppliers have sizable numbers of conservative-minded voters who tend to favor more punitive approaches to crime.
Persons:
Mike Hestrin, ”, Hestrin
Organizations:
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Locations:
America, Riverside County, Calif, California, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Placer, Sacramento