MINNEAPOLIS
(AP) -- More than five months after Prince's fatal drug overdose,
investigators have narrowed their focus to two main questions: whether
doctors illegally prescribed opioids meant for the pop star and whether
the fentanyl that killed him came from a black-market source, a law
enforcement official said.
Those lines of
inquiry raise the prospect that a doctor or doctors could be charged
with writing unlawful prescriptions and that a separate suspect or set
of suspects with ties to narcotics trafficking could be charged with
supplying the fatal dose.
Prince was 57 when
he was found April 21 in an elevator at his suburban Minneapolis studio
and estate. Authorities have revealed little publicly about their
investigation, saying only that the probe is ongoing.
The
law enforcement official who described the investigation has knowledge
of the inquiry but spoke on condition of anonymity because the person
was not authorized to comment on the record. The person declined to
provide any additional details.
Investigations
of fatal overdoses can be lengthy and complex, especially when drug
traffickers or other underworld figures are involved.
Ryan
Pacyga, a Minneapolis criminal defense attorney who is not connected to
the Prince case, said law enforcement is not going to rush unless there
is a risk to the public or immediate danger to others.
In
typical drug cases, investigators will subpoena documents including
computer files, emails and financial records. When looking at where the
fentanyl came from, they will "follow the money" and look at orders,
shipments and the bank accounts or credit cards that made payments,
Pacyga said.
They will also identify people they want to speak with.
"They'll
interview from the bottom up," Pacyga said. "They'll talk to the people
who really don't have much criminal exposure and keep working their way
up to who they think the big wrongdoers are."
Notable drugs cases are often prosecuted in federal, not state, court.
Among
the most serious federal charges a person who supplied the fentanyl
could face - be it a doctor, trafficker or friend - is opioid
distribution resulting in death, which carries a mandatory minimum of 20
years in prison. Under Minnesota law, anyone who gave Prince the
fentanyl that killed him could face a potential third-degree murder
charge, even if that person did not know the pills contained the drug.
Fentanyl,
which is 50 times more potent than heroin, can be obtained as a legal
painkiller with a prescription.
But some findings in Prince's case point
to an illegal source, including evidence that some pills taken from his
home after he died were counterfeit drugs that were marked as a generic
version of Vicodin but actually contained fentanyl, an official close
to the investigation told the AP in August. That official also spoke on
condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.
Even
when it is produced legally by pharmaceutical manufacturers, fentanyl
can be obtained illegally in many ways. A doctor can prescribe it to
someone who then passes it on to a third person or prescriptions can be
forged.
The official who spoke in August said
Prince did not have a prescription for any controlled substances in
Minnesota in the last 12 months.
Prince had a
reputation for clean living, and some friends said they never saw any
sign of drug use. But longtime friend and collaborator Sheila E. has
said Prince had hip and knee problems that she said came from years of
jumping off risers and stage speakers in heels.
The
death of one of the most influential musicians of the modern era has
drawn public attention to a startling increase in fentanyl overdoses.
Most of the deaths are linked not to prescriptions but to illicitly made
fentanyl pills or fentanyl that has been mixed with and sold as heroin,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As
little as 2 milligrams of fentanyl can be lethal and those who make it
illicitly are not meticulous about how much fentanyl goes in each pill.
Traffickers often pass the pills off as Oxycontin or some other
name-brand opioid, so, if Prince took a counterfeit pill, he may not
have known it contained fentanyl.
Determining
whether the last person to hand or send the fentanyl to Prince knew it
was fentanyl is probably one of the most difficult questions for
investigators. Legal experts say evidence of such direct knowledge can
be critical, but isn't necessary, to bring charges.
Another
possibility is that Prince ordered the drugs himself online. Some
online distributors accept orders through dark-net sites, then deliver
the drugs by unsuspecting mail-service companies.
If traffickers bear responsibility for the fatal fentanyl, identifying them could be difficult, even impossible.
The
chain of traffickers could include Chinese producers of the raw
ingredients of fentanyl and Mexican cartels that transform the drug into
pills at clandestine labs. Pill mills also operate in the U.S., the DEA
says.
Shortly after Prince's death,
authorities said they were looking at whether a doctor supplied him with
drugs, similar to how Conrad Murray prescribed the anesthetic propofol
to Michael Jackson, contributing to his 2009 death. Murray was charged
seven months later, convicted by a California jury of involuntary
manslaughter in 2011 and sentenced to four years behind bars. He was
released after serving two.
Charges against a
doctor for writing unnecessary prescriptions to feed someone's drug
habit can quickly stack up. They can include tax evasion if ill-gotten
profits are not included on tax returns, as well as wire fraud if any
aspect of the crime was conducted over the telephone.
