VERO BEACH — The first Treasure Coast drug dealer convicted of murder in a drug overdose death case got sentenced to 30 years in state prison Thursday, the maximum penalty.

Drug dealer William McCartney III, 23, will serve up to 30 years in state prison, Circuit Judge Robert Hawley ruled Thursday. McCartney was sentenced as a habitual offender, making it harder for him to earn parole.

Hawley ordered him to 30 years in jail for third-degree murder, 30 years for selling two capsules of methadone and 10 years for selling a number of pills of Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication.

But all the sentences will run at the same time, totaling 30 years.

“We believe it is an appropriate sentence,” said Assistant State Attorney Ryan Butler.

McCartney’s attorney, Rusty Akins, said he plans to appeal the sentence.

In March, a jury found McCartney guilty of selling the methadone that killed 19-year-old Nolan Adams, who voluntarily purchased the drugs in January 2005.

According to trial testimony, Adams drowned. His lungs filled with fluid as he lay in bed next to his sleeping girlfriend in a house west of Vero Beach.

Prior to sentencing in the courtroom, McCartney turned to Adams’ parents, Ray and Phyllis Adams, and apologized.

“I am sorry from the bottom of my heart,” McCartney said while wearing an orange jail suit and shackles on his hands.

McCartney also apologized to his relatives in the courtroom, from Alabama and Tennessee, for disappointing them because he was in jail during marriages and the death of his mother.

One of his relatives sobbed and gasped as he spoke. His father, Bill McCartney, didn’t comment.

McCartney turned to Hawley and cited Dante’s “Divine Comedy” to express his point that it is difficult to judge who will rise from hell to heaven. McCartney contended he is turning his life around.

“Our family can forgive you,” said Adams’ father, “but there are consequences” for the death.

Butler said McCartney “was motivated by greed, a profit of $5” to make money days after being released from St. Lucie County Jail for a parole violation. In Alabama, he was convicted of forging $16,000 in checks from an employer.

Initially, the investigation into Adams death was stalled, said Butler, for the same reason it has been hard to prosecute in dozens of other drug overdose deaths on the Treasure Coast — witnesses are afraid to come forward, the prosecutor said.

In Indian River County alone there were 26 drug overdose deaths in 2008 and 18 through mid-June, Sheriff’s Detective Bill Staar testified in court. At the current rate, Staar expects there to be 36 such deaths this year and virtually all the cases have involved prescription drugs.

“That doesn’t include all the other people who didn’t die” of drug overdoses but who became ill, Staar said.

In 2008, Martin County had 12 overdose deaths and St. Lucie County had 34, according to the Medical Examiner’s Office.

In Adams’ death, his housemates finally told of his using methadone, a powerful drug, and Butler was able to prosecute the case.

“People don’t want to come forward,” Butler said. “And it is difficult to track street drug dealers.”

Adams learned of McCartney through friends, according to trial testimony.

Akins partially blamed the death on the drug industry advertising that all ills can be cured by taking drugs.

People “are programming to take a pill,” Akins said.

Treasure Coast drug overdose deaths in 2008:

Indian River County — 26

St. Lucie County — 34

Martin County — 12

SOURCE: Medical Examiner’s Office
Elliot Jones, TCPalm.com

Tags: appeals, attorney, court, death, drugs, father, girlfriend, jail, judge, jury, money, murder

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