Carl Irace, a Sag Harbor Village justice and a private attorney with offices in East Hampton, plans to petition the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of a client, a Staten Island man who is now serving 40 years in prison for distributing drugs in 2017. The illicit drugs were said to have caused a death and a near-fatal overdose.
Keith Wyche, now 41, was arrested in September 2018, accused of operating a drug delivery service on Staten Island that distributed fentanyl causing the fatal overdose of a 43-year-old man, and a few months later dispensed heroin causing the overdose of a 28-year-old woman, who was resuscitated by first responders. He was also charged with distribution and conspiracy to distribute the narcotics.
A federal jury convicted Mr. Wyche in February 2023; he was sentenced in June 2024. Mr. Irace did not represent the man during the trial, but was appointed last December, as a member of the federally-designated Criminal Justice Act Panel, to defend him during an appeal of his sentence. The panel is made up of attorneys approved to represent indigent defendants in federal criminal cases, which public defenders cannot take on because of conflicts.
“We are here because the sentencing proceeding wasn’t fair,” Mr. Irace began, presenting his oral argument to a three-judge panel at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Lower Manhattan on Oct. 31. He contended that the government had not proven “but-for” causation in the case — that the death would not have occurred if Mr. Wyche had not sold the fentanyl — and that there had not been an intent to cause harm. The district court judge had not given “circumspect consideration” to those elements of the crime, he argued, resulting in a “really harsh and substantively unreasonable” sentence.
The judges pushed back on both points, pointing out that the jury had indeed determined “but-for” causation when it convicted Mr. Wyche of the crime, and that the judge’s decision directly referenced intent —specifically, that the defendant continued to sell narcotics knowing that his product had caused overdoses.
“Surely most drug dealers are not selling with the intent that it will kill the customer,” one of the three judges said. “They’re selling with the intent that the powerfulness of the drug will get around, and people will know.”
The case is part of a sharp increase in “drug-induced homicide” prosecutions across the country over the past decade, which hold dealers responsible for deaths and injuries caused by the drugs they sell. The appellate court filed a summary order on Nov. 11, affirming the judgement of the lower court and finding that the 40-year sentence was not substantively unreasonable, “given the severity of the crime and the totality of the circumstances.”
In an email following the decision, Mr. Irace wrote that his client intends to ask the Supreme Court to review the Nov. 11 order. During his argument, Mr. Irace had referenced a 2014 Supreme Court decision, Burrage v. United States, in which the Court reversed the 20-year sentence of a drug dealer convicted of selling heroin, specifically because “but-for” causation had not been proven. Experts had testified that the drug was a “contributing” cause of a longtime drug dealer’s death.
Mr. Irace believes the current case could be an opportunity for the Supreme Court to “clarify” that test.
The Supreme Court receives more than 7,000 such requests each year, according to the U.S. Courts website, and grants about 100 to 150 of them — generally in cases of national significance, or to “harmonize” conflicting opinions from lower courts, or in cases that could set a precedent for deciding similar cases in the future.
Mr. Wyche is currently incarcerated at U.S.P. Canaan, a federal prison in Pennsylvania. Absent Supreme Court intervention, he is scheduled for release on July 3, 2056.
