An aged drug dealer was sentenced Tuesday to 2½ years in prison in reference to the overdose death of actor Michael Ok. Williams.
Carlos Macci, who’s 72, was amongst 4 males arrested on drug trafficking fees tied to the death of Williams, who was finest recognized for his function as the dreaded stickup man Omar Little in HBO’s “The Wire.”
Macci was sentenced to 30 months in prison, plus three years of supervised launch, with the primary yr in an inpatient drug remedy facility.
“I would like to say, your honor, I’m sorry for what has happened,” Macci mentioned in the New York City courthouse earlier than the decision was introduced.
He had shuffled into the Manhattan courtroom along with his palms cuffed and his again barely hunched over. Macci, who is usually bald and has a gray beard, saved his eyes skilled on U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams as she rendered his sentence.
Dominic Dupont, Williams’ nephew, mentioned outdoors the courtroom afterward: “Today was a sad day. There are no winners here.”
“We lost an amazing human being,” he added.
Williams, 54, died in September 2021 after having consumed heroin laced with fentanyl, which he purchased the day gone by from a member of Macci’s crew in Brooklyn. The trade was caught on surveillance video and described by New York federal prosecutors in court docket filings.
Macci and the three different defendants continued to promote the batch of fentanyl-laced heroin even after Williams’ deadly overdose made headlines, prosecutors mentioned.
Macci pleaded responsible in April to possessing and distributing narcotics.
Macci’s lawyer, Benjamin Zeman, requested a sentence of time served, citing his superior age and his hardscrabble background. He dropped out of college in the second grade and by no means discovered to learn and write, and he has struggled with drug habit for many of his life, Zeman mentioned in court docket filings.
“Mr. Macci was on that block” for “the exact same reason” Williams was there, Zeman informed the decide. “He was there to get drugs.”
“An additional term of incarceration won’t help Mr. Macci or Mr. Williams, and certainly won’t prevent the next overdose,” he added.
In court docket filings, New York federal prosecutors requested the decide to sentence Macci to a minimum of 4 years.
Micah Fergenson, a prosecutor with the U.S. legal professional’s workplace for Southern New York, famous in court docket that Macci has greater than 20 prior convictions, most of them for drug offenses, and that the final 4 all resulted in sentences of time served.
“They had absolutely no deterrent effect,” Fergenson mentioned.
Fergenson added that, by Macci’s lawyer’s personal account, his well being has improved since he was positioned in jail.
“It’s the unusual case where a lengthier term of incarceration” might “benefit the defendant,” Fergenson mentioned.
David Simon, a co-creator of “The Wire,” wrote a three-page letter to the decide in search of mercy for Macci. Simon had an in depth relationship with Williams, who was open about his struggles with habit.
“No possible good can come from incarcerating a (72-year-old) soul, largely illiterate, who has himself struggled with a lifetime of addiction and who has not engaged in street-level sales of narcotics with ambitions of success and profit but rather as someone caught up in the diaspora of addiction himself,” Simon wrote.
“Michael would look at Mr. Macci and hope against hope that this moment in which he finds himself might prove redemptive, that his remaining years might amount to something more, and that by the grace of love and leniency, something humane and worthy might be rescued from the tragedy.”
Before the decide introduced Macci’s sentence, Williams’ nephew addressed the court docket.
Dupont choked up as he recounted delivering the information to Williams’ mom that her son was lifeless. He went on to say that he felt for Macci and his battle with habit.
“I’m really hopeful that this will be an opportunity for people to see and understand the impacts their decisions will have on people,” he mentioned.
In saying the sentence, Abrams mentioned she did not assume it was in the curiosity of justice to give Macci a prolonged prison time period given his age. She additionally acknowledged his tough upbringing and lengthy historical past of drug abuse.
But she famous the extraordinary toll fentanyl has taken in the U.S. and mentioned Macci and his crew continued to promote the drug “knowing their product just killed a man.”
Selling medicine, she mentioned whereas wanting straight at Macci, “not only cost Mr. Williams his life, but it’s costing you your freedom.”
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