Is Jordan Willis rehab check in just an elaborate legal strategy? Could he now face legal prosecution? Legal scholars weigh in as to what could happen following a preliminary toxicology report finding triple the lethal amount of fentanyl in the 3 deceased mens’ systems along with cocaine.
A Kansas City scientist checking himself into a rehab facility could be part of a wider legal strategy to garner ‘sympathy in the court of the public opinion’, say experts after three of his friends were found dead in his back garden.
Ricky Johnson, 38, Clayton McGeeney, 36, and David Harrington, 37, were all found dead at the house of award winning HIV scientist, Jordan Willis in Kansas City, Missouri on January 9.
Early toxicology reports show that up to three times the lethal amount of fentantyl to kill a human and cocaine along with THC have been found in their systems.
Jordan Willis rehab check in – just a clever play to avoid harsh penalties?
Willis checked into rehab earlier this week, while a friend claimed it was the ‘enormous, heartbreaking wake-up call’ he needed to seek professional help.
But not everyone necessarily believes the integrity of the ‘gestures.’
Attorney and retired NYPD inspector Paul Mauro said: ‘I think they’re trying to play on people’s sympathies that he had a drug problem. It verifies what a lot of us speculated on: maybe a drug they didn’t know was in there.’
He told Fox News that the announcement could even be a preemptive move to get a shorter sentence if he is charged with a crime.
Detectives are combing through the phones of the three men who were found dead nearly 48 hours after the football watch party on January 7.
Willis moved out of his home within days of police knocking on his door to question him about the bodies, fearing retaliation, and hasn’t been seen since.
For two days, the families of the victims say they visited Willis’ home, called him and sent him Facebook messages asking where they were. Only for the man to not respond.
Who supplied the men the class A narcotics?
Eventually, the fiancée of one of the men broke into the house through the basement and found the first body in the backyard. She then called police, who arrived to find Willis in his underwear, holding a wine glass.
Speculation as to how the three men came to end up dead included the trio taking enough fentanyl, combined with alcohol, after making their way to Willis’ backyard only to pass out and freeze to death.
Willis claimed to not have left his home for two days and slept with noise-cancelling headphones that blocked the sound of his friends’ family frantic knocking.
A fifth friend who also at the football viewing party, Alex Weamer-Lee has insisted he was not the last person to see the trio alive and that he left seeing the three men along with Willis watching ‘Jeopardy’. Willis has contradicted the childhood friend, claiming he went upstairs ‘to crash’, leaving Weamer-Lee and the other three men downstairs.
How the men came to obtain the felony A narcotics and whether Willis or Weamer-Lee, the two surviving friends bore any complicity to the three mens’ death continued to remain unknown.
Evidence mitigation
Neama Rahmani, a Los Angeles-based attorney and former federal prosecutor, told Fox News that a stint in a rehabilitation facility could be used to reduce a potential sentence if Willis or Weamer-Lee – could face charges in the men’s deaths.
‘It’s evidence mitigation – someone is trying to turn his life around, and judges and prosecutors take that into account,’ Rahmani told FOX on Thursday. ‘You can convince the judge to sentence on the low end of the range or convince the prosecutor to not charge the most serious offense.’
‘What I expect them to say, as far as the defense, is that [Willis], too, was a victim, that he too was drugged – but he survived,’ Rahmani said. ‘I think that’s going to be the defense of the case – that they bought the drugs through a fourth party and three people died, and he happened to live.’
Rahmani said that a stint in rehab would do nothing to prevent charges from being filed and prosecuted should evidence implicating Willis or Weamer-Lee in the men’s deaths be discovered. Likewise, he said, a judge would not be swayed if someone sold or procured drugs without knowing that they contained a deadly amount of fentanyl.
‘If you take drugs, you are legally responsible for your actions – voluntary drug use is not a legal defense,’ Rahmani said. ‘Only involuntary drug use – when you are drugged – is a viable defense.’
Will prosecutors now seek charges?
In Missouri, according to criminal defense attorney and former Platte County prosecutor Daniel Miller, any death that results from the commission of a felony can lead to a felony murder charge.
‘But you have to have evidence of the drug and who had it and who took it before you get felony murder,’ Miller told FOX News on Thursday. ‘If they can get evidence that he comitted a felony drug sale there and these men died as a result of that drug sale, felony murder is possible – not guaranteed.’
Time in rehab would not help Willis evade criminal charges, should sufficient evidence be found, he said.
‘When you have three dead victims, and they’re saying that you’re criminally liable for them, I don’t know what kind of mitigation there could be,” Miller said. “Whether you say ‘we ingested a bunch of dope, a bunch of drugs, [or] we played with a bunch of snakes,’ whatever. If they make you criminally liable, I don’t know of anything that’s going to mitigate that – you’re going to get maxed out [in sentencing].’
Authorities continued to await final autopsy results and whether prosecutors could now decide to levy charges.
