L.A. case tests limits of murder charges for fentanyl overdoses

A person holds a bag containing a white substance.

Sept. 12, 2024 3 AM PT

Mo Ida Solomon’s head rested on a coffee table. Her fingers, dusted with white powder, gripped the edge of it. Her half-opened eyes stared at nothing.

She died in July 2023 at her Los Angeles apartment. Eight months later, a homicide detective showed a photograph of Solomon’s body to Casey Linder, who said they had been “good friends for a long time.”

“Poor girl was just sitting at her table, crisscross applesauce, slumped over, f—ing dead,” the detective told Linder. “The bottom line, Casey, is whatever you brought her killed her.”

Los Angeles County prosecutors played the tape of Linder’s interview at a preliminary hearing this week to support charging the 38-year-old Granada Hills resident with second-degree murder for allegedly supplying Solomon with a deadly cocktail of fentanyl, meth and Xanax.

Linder has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer, Alex Kessel, says the case is among the first attempts by L.A. County prosecutors to charge a defendant with murder for distributing fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller 50 times more potent than heroin.

Venusse Dunn, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, said Linder was the second alleged fentanyl dealer county prosecutors have charged with murder. A 21-year-old Colton woman was charged in April with distributing the drug to two men who died, and a Canoga Park woman has also been accused of murdering her twin 3-year-old sons by exposing them to fentanyl.

Linder’s preliminary hearing marked the first time L.A. County prosecutors have presented evidence to support such a charge.

With fatal overdoses skyrocketing across the country, local prosecutors have increasingly turned to murder charges against dealers. Authorities in left-leaning jurisdictions, however, have until recently been reluctant to pursue such cases.

Critics of the tactic argue it locks up only the lowest-level distributors, rather than wholesalers. And in Linder’s case, as with others that have preceded it nationwide, the relationship between dealer and customer can seemingly blur into friendship. Solomon pleaded with Linder to bring her fentanyl while she was going through withdrawal, text messages showed.

“There’s not a hint of evidence that this man wanted to kill his friend,” Kessel said.

Those who support murder charges argue convictions bring justice to the victims’ loved ones and deter the sale of a drug that is killing people at unprecedented rates. A medical examiner’s official testified at Linder’s hearing that fentanyl has caused a 35% increase in fatal overdoses in the last four years in Los Angeles County.

“It is a superdrug whose fatality is unique,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Benjamin Schwartz told the judge.

To convict dealers of murder, prosecutors must show they acted with malice. Either they intended to kill a customer or they knew what they were selling could kill — and didn’t care.

With Linder, prosecutors used his text messages and interview with detectives to make the case that he sold fentanyl to Solomon knowing it could kill her.

Kessel argued his client was charged in a “political move” by L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón, who is facing a difficult reelection fight against an opponent who has positioned himself as tough on crime.

Dunn, the district attorney’s spokeswoman, said charging decisions don’t “revolve around the election cycle.”

“Our office regularly pursues charges of drug trafficking, distribution resulting in death and other serious drug-related offenses that carry significant penalties,” she said in a statement. “Filing murder charges in these types of cases proves a significant challenge but we are committed to applying the law to the facts of each case and determining if a murder charge is appropriate.”

Kessel questioned how Linder could be charged with murder for giving a friend something she begged him to provide. The lawyer offered the scenario of a gun dealer who sells a pistol to a suicidal man who then shoots himself.

“Do you charge the gun seller with murder?” he asked.

Just after 11 p.m. on the last night of her life, Solomon, 35, tapped out a string of text messages to Linder: “Caseyyyy. U busy. Hellooo ring a ding.”

“O hey,” Linder replied, according to messages shown in court.

Solomon said she “wanted to treat myself.”

“Won’t be a regular occurrence,” she promised Linder. “Just need a lil relaxer.”

Solomon had struggled with heroin addiction for years, according to testimony. She asked Linder often for black tar heroin but told him she worried about using fentanyl.

“I’m begging for ur help casey,” she wrote. “I don’t wanna smoke this fenny cuz that’s a whole nother ballgame.”

In another exchange, Linder said he was out of heroin. Solomon said she was experiencing withdrawal symptoms and asked for fentanyl, telling him, “I’ll pay extra.”

After Linder didn’t respond, she wrote, “I literally feel like I’m dying.”

“I’ll bring it if you’re that sick,” Linder said.

Two months later, text messages show, Solomon asked for heroin. Linder said he couldn’t find any but “got some of that other stuff if that will do.”

There was no doubt what drug he was referring to, a judge ruled at the preliminary hearing: fentanyl.

“Ya that’d will do,” Solomon said. Linder said he’d be at her Mid-City apartment an hour after midnight.

“C u soon,” Solomon wrote.

Los Angeles police found her 15 hours later. Her right hand gripped the edge of a coffee table strewn with clutter: two lighters, a can of Coca-Cola, an ashtray containing three cigarette butts, a bulbous glass pipe, a small plastic bag. Her left hand clutched a cylindrical plastic container.

The position of her body indicated she experienced a “quick response” to the drugs that killed her, testified Rakhshanda Javed, chief of the laboratories division for the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner.

A deputy medical examiner, Kevin Young, acknowledged the county did not perform a full autopsy of Solomon’s body. Facing an overburdened caseload during the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, the county changed its policy to no longer conduct comprehensive autopsies on overdose victims.

Young said his office ruled Solomon’s death an accidental overdose based on a lack of trauma to her body, her history of drug abuse and the fact she died surrounded by drug paraphernalia.

Kessel asked how Young could be sure she didn’t die of an existing condition such as heart disease.

“There’s no reason to suspect that,” Young replied.

Eight months after Solomon died, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department searched the three-bedroom home where Linder lived with his father.

In Linder’s bedroom, Det. Joshua Stamsek testified, he found digital scales, a nasal spray used to reverse an opioid overdose and black tar heroin, meth and fentanyl packaged in small amounts.

Linder was interviewed at a sheriff’s station by Det. John Lamberti. After reading Linder his rights, the homicide detective showed him the photograph of Solomon’s corpse.

“It’s horrible,” Linder said.

The detective said it was no secret Linder supplied Solomon with drugs. Linder said he hadn’t in “a long time.”

“And I don’t even sell fentanyl,” he volunteered.

“Who said fentanyl?” Lamberti asked.

“Oh,” Linder said. “I just assumed that killed her.”

Told he gave Solomon the drugs that killed her, Linder said, “No way.” Sounding distraught, he insisted to the detective he didn’t sell a drug that “f—ing kills people.”

After two days of testimony this week, Kessel asked Superior Court Judge Eleanor Hunter to dismiss the murder charge. The prosecution’s case, he argued, was riddled with doubt.

The authorities could not rule out that someone else might have brought the fatal drugs in the 15-hour window between when Linder said he would arrive and when the police found Solomon’s body, Kessel said.

She was still alive at 3:30 a.m. when she sent a selfie to a friend on Snapchat, Lamberti testified. Kessel pointed to text messages she sent minutes earlier to an ex-boyfriend who Lamberti said had supplied her with drugs in the past.

And even if Linder did give Solomon the fentanyl that killed her, Kessel argued, “she made the conscious, voluntary decision” to take it.

Solomon wasn’t tricked or forced, he said; Linder didn’t sell her fentanyl disguised as a different drug. Nor did Linder see that she was overdosing and abandon her, the lawyer said.

Hunter wasn’t persuaded, ruling there was enough evidence for Linder to stand trial for second-degree murder.

She pointed to his statement to the detective that fentanyl “f—ing kills people.”

“He didn’t care,” Hunter said. “He still provided it knowing she was addicted, knowing she would take it.”