A Havre de Grace man has been convicted of second-degree depraved heart murder — the first such conviction in the state — after he supplied drugs to a man who overdosed and died in October 2023.

Kusan Hines, 43, pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree depraved heart murder and one count of distribution of a controlled dangerous substance in Harford County Circuit Court on Friday, according to the Harford County State’s Attorney’s Office. Hines was sentenced to 12 years in the Department of Corrections and five years of supervised probation upon his release.

The charges date to October 2023, when police were dispatched to an apartment in Havre de Grace for a welfare check and found a 33-year-old man dead from a suspected drug overdose. Prosecutors said a forensic toxicologist confirmed that the man had a combination of cocaine, fentanyl and other drugs in his system and confirmed that the cause of death was from a drug overdose.

The state’s attorney’s office said surveillance footage from the man’s apartment showed Hines and his girlfriend leaving the apartment on Oct. 11 — the night of the overdose. According to prosecutors, Hines and his girlfriend were the last people to enter or leave the apartment before the man’s body was found the next day.

During an interview with police in November 2023, Hines said he was friends with the man who died. Hines told police that he had gone to the apartment to cook crack cocaine and smoke with the victim but left after the victim began “acting weird” after ingesting the crack cocaine. Hines also told police that the victim had a preexisting mental condition that caused him to hallucinate, and that drugs made the condition worse.

Harford County State’s Attorney Allison Healy said Hines’ knowledge of the victim’s mental health condition and his decision to leave the man without medical assistance allowed prosecutors to charge Hines with second-degree depraved heart murder — a charge that requires an extreme disregard for human life.

When Healy was elected in 2023, she said her office made it a priority to explore manslaughter and murder charges, when possible, in overdose cases. She said whenever an overdose occurs, investigators work to charge anyone who may have been connected — specifically, drug dealers.

“Not every set of facts will allow for these charges to be pursued but in the right set of facts and in the circumstances similar to this one, you can believe that our office is going to be looking to pursue murder or manslaughter charges,” Healy said.

Healy noted that if the state had drug-related homicide laws, prosecuting drug suppliers in the event of overdoses would be easier.

“Drug-related homicide laws would certainly make pursuing murder or homicide convictions a lot easier and wouldn’t require all the stars to align in terms of facts like what was required in this case,” Healy said. “Yes, we would like the drug-induced homicide laws but we are doing this because it is the right thing and if you act with extreme disregard for life, we will pursue those charges.”

The conviction, Healy said, is in an effort to take a “harder approach on drug distribution” and to “deter drug dealers” through tougher prosecution.

“Every prosecutor’s office should be taking the tough on crime approach that we are taking,” Healy said. “That is the reason for this and if we can accomplish a secondary goal that will help us make our goal easier, then sure, that is a benefit, but our No. 1 goal is deterrence.”

In Annapolis, state lawmakers have proposed legislation that would charge a drug dealer with a felony if they distributed heroin, fentanyl or chemical analogues of heroin or fentanyl to a person who then suffers serious bodily injury or death. The proposed bill, known as Victoria, Scottie, Ashleigh, and Yader’s Law, named in memory of four young Maryland residents who died of fentanyl overdoses, was introduced in the current General Assembly session by Carroll County Del. Chris Tomlinson, a Republican representing District 5.

“Over 20 states, including Washington State, already have similar laws in place that allow prosecutors to hold opioid drug dealers accountable who sell a product that kills their customer,” Tomlinson stated in a news release. “Introducing legislation to stop the folks who are putting this garbage into the hands of our sons and daughters is far from a radical idea.”

The bill had its first reading in January and has since been referred to the Judicial Proceedings Committee. A version of the bill was introduced last year but did not make it out of committee.

Even without enabling state legislation that assists prosecutors in charging suspects in drug related deaths, Healy said the precedent set by Hines’ conviction will “only make it easier” for prosecutors in these cases moving forward.

However, criminal defense attorney Benjamin Hebst said he does not believe the conviction will have much of an impact on prosecuting drug-related deaths.

“I don’t see this being incredibly influential,” Hebst said. “It is a great headline for the state, but it is still not that common that police are able to trace back to specific dealers. I don’t think we are going to see the court flooded with these cases.”

Hebst explained that in drug-related death cases, numerous complex factors such as identifying a dealer, toxicology reports and pinning a supplier to a specific dose or supply pose challenges for the state. He shared Healy’s sentiments on the conviction acting as a deterrent for drug dealers, but said he does not see its impact extending much further than that.

“A good prosecutor’s office is not going to charge second-degree murder just to create a headline; they have to have evidence to back it up like toxicology and the medical examiner which makes it more complex for the state to prove,” Hebst said. “The main reason for strict criminal laws is to deter people from breaking them, not so much to fill up the prisons.”

Southern Maryland criminal defense attorney Jeremy Widder, who won a case similar to Hines’ in 2019, added that this conviction may lead to more prosecutions and jury trials, but he is unsure if it will lead to additional convictions since the conviction was in the circuit court.

Widder explained that the conviction is “novel” but since it did not come from a higher court like the Supreme Court of Maryland, it cannot be used as legal precedent across the state.

“It’s novel, but it can’t be cited in another circuit court case,” Widder said. “If the legislature changes the law and creates a different statute and lowers the elements the state has to prove, that is going to open more people up to prosecution but one outcome in one circuit court doesn’t change much.”

Both Widder and Hebst said drug related death prosecutions seem to only impact “street-level” criminals and do not take aim at the core of Maryland’s drug supply.

Most of the time, Widder said, drug users and dealers are not concerned with new laws and legal precedent and do not pay attention to headlines that could deter them from selling drugs.

“You’re prosecuting the last guy who touches the drugs who is almost always the poorest person in the chain and the most likely to be addicted to the drugs themselves,” Widder said. “These prosecutions are going after the people who are the least culpable for how the drugs got into someone’s body, who also make the least amount of money in the operation.”

From a defense attorney perspective, Hebst and Widder both said even with the possibility of new laws and legal precedent, convicting someone of murder in a drug overdose case will remain challenging for the state.

“What tends to happen with criminal stuff is it is the weird edge cases like this where circumstances perfectly align that make the headline,”  Widder said. “This case is not titanic or anything because these cases are all very fact dependent and the circumstances of each case are going to be different.”

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