OTTAWA, Ill. _ Defense attorney Eric Miskell represented numerous drug dealers over the years, and by his account he was good at his job. He knew how to find loopholes and technicalities that would get testimony stricken, evidence thrown out and charges dropped.
But three months ago, he underwent a radical change of heart about his work when a former client named Nickie Martin was found slumped over on a motel room bed. She had died from a heroin and fentanyl overdose.
Miskell was stunned. He had seen Martin only a few hours earlier, and as far as he knew, she was doing well. She had gotten good reports from the center where she received treatment for her long-standing addiction and had recently regained custody of two of her children.
Her death was the kind of tragedy that has become commonplace in this small community 75 miles southwest of Chicago. LaSalle County had 39 fatal overdoses in 2018, which, given its population of 110,000, amounted to one of the highest opioid-related death rates in Illinois.
"It almost hit the community like a nuclear bomb," said Brian Vescogni, a former drug prosecutor now in private practice. "We weren't prepared for it, and it's gotten worse. Without (the overdose-reversing medication) Narcan, you'd have 20 people dying a month, minimum."
Martin, 31, wasn't the first of Miskell's clients to die of an overdose, but the futility of the work that went into her recovery angered him. He was furious at whoever supplied the fatal drugs to Martin, believing if the dealer were ever caught, the punishment prescribed by law would be insufficient.
Miskell vowed to stop representing accused drug dealers. Then, sitting in his law office after Martin's wake, he went even further: He composed a three-page letter to Gov. J.B. Pritzker and President Donald Trump, arguing that the war on drugs hasn't been tough enough.
"I am asking the State of Illinois and the United States Government to consider making the sale of illegal opioids an act of domestic terrorism with dealer terrorists punished accordingly," he wrote. "All illegal sales of opioids should be a class X felony regardless of amount with a minimum sentence of 12 years as a first-time conviction."
It was a remarkable proposal coming from a defense attorney. And as you might expect, it hasn't been well received from others in that line of work.
"A large number of the (accused opioid sellers) I represent are addicts themselves; they're generally trying to support their own habits," said LaSalle County Public Defender Tim Cappellini. "Putting them in jail would go totally against the trend of trying to get treatment for many of these folks."
But Miskell said opioids, which claimed nearly 50,000 American lives in 2017, are different from other drugs. Everyone in the illegal distribution chain, from foreign kingpins to street corner dealers, knows they're selling a potentially lethal substance, and should be treated accordingly, he said.
"At what point do you get frustrated enough to say you've got to do something?" he said. "More people die every day of heroin overdoses in this country than die in the war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. How the (expletive) does that happen?"
