Manslaughter charge in drug death is overdoing it

Athens County Prosecutor Dave Warren wants to throw the book at an Ohio University student who allegedly "œprovided" Eric S. Hansen with the magic mushroom (psilocybin) that he ingested at some point before falling/jumping out of a fourth-floor dorm window on April 28.

Hansen died after hitting the ground below Weld House on OU's South Green.

Warren appears intent on destroying a second young life, in order to press home his aggressive anti-drug program. This dovetails with his posting "mug-shots" of convicted drug dealers on a huge billboard on Rt. 33 near Nelsonville.

In a press conference last week, Warren, joined by the OU police chief and dean of students, announced that a grand jury had returned indictments for involuntary manslaughter and aggravated drug trafficking against James Tyler Wagers, 19, of Mansfield, in connection with Hansen's death. Wagers was a freshman at the time of the incident at Weld House.

If convicted of the manslaughter charge, Wagers faces up to 10 years in prison. He could get another 18 months in prison on the drug charge.

I agree that Athens County has a serious drug problem that's getting steadily worse, and that most of the public, myself included, supports aggressive efforts to combat it.

I also think that sending a kid to prison for giving another kid a magic mushroom is a gross over-reaction, and distracts from the more serious drug problems facing our community.

Most people I've talked to about this feel the same way I do. They wonder why Dave Warren feels the need to wield a sledgehammer in a case where the victim voluntarily ingested the illegal drug, and then, unaccountably, behaved in a way that the overwhelming majority of the people taking the same drug would not behave.

Consider the following situation:

A clerk at the local state liquor store sells a bottle of Kentucky bourbon to a sober-appearing college student with a valid ID. That student then gets into his car and drives around town. After drinking most of the whiskey, he drives head-on into a tree, killing himself.

I'm pretty sure the prosecutor would not be prosecuting the store clerk for selling the whiskey to the victim.

This is because 1) the clerk sold the booze in a legal transaction; and 2) he had no way of knowing what the guy would do with it.

Let's take No. 2 first.

Wagers, if he really did provide Hansen with the psilocybin mushroom, could not have anticipated that his fellow student would eat it, then fall out of a window. Wagers would no sooner expect that behavior than the store clerk would expect someone to drink a whole bottle of booze while driving around town.

But what about No. 1?

Warren will argue that what makes Wagers' situation different from one involving alcohol is that selling booze in a state store is legal while selling or "providing" illegal mushrooms is a felony.

That's a good point, though I would argue that it's not a good enough one to justify sending a kid to prison for a decade, especially considering he's being prosecuted for drug trafficking anyway.

It also ignores the probable circumstances of the alleged transaction between Wagers and Hansen, the campus drug culture in general, and the relative harmlessness of psilocybin when compared to the hard drugs that are a much more serious local problem.

The usual way that college kids get magic mushrooms (and this hasn't changed since I attended OU in the '70s) is that one student finds a source for enough 'shrooms to go around, and then passes them out to willing friends, either for free or at some nominal price. The next time they feel the urge to get high on mushrooms, one of the other students might be the one who obtains the drug and distributes it to his friends.

In the campus recreational drug culture, the line between drug provider and drug user is constantly shifting. The "trade" is typically informal and cooperative, and students typically don't think of it as drug dealing. Rather, it's looked at similar to going to get a pizza. The guy who has the cash buys the pizza, and then splits it up with friends, who may or may not pay him back.

Yes, I realize that psilocybin isn't pizza, and obviously can have harmful effects. But it's relatively benign when compared to harder drugs such as meth, heroin and pain pills, and is far less associated with causing injury than alcohol. Let's put it this way. If I saw a guy drink a bottle of bourbon, then walk out onto a fifth-floor balcony, I wouldn't be surprised to hear later that he fell to his death. If I knew he was doing psilocybin, however, I'd be shocked to hear that he fell, and would wonder what else contributed to his death.

I doubt Warren can make the involuntary manslaughter charge stick against Wagers. He'll have to be able to prove some cause and effect between the student ingesting the mushroom and falling to his death. That's not going to be easy.

That's why he should reconsider, and instead focus on winning a conviction on the drug charge. Otherwise, this prosecution just appears arbitrary and malicious.