Robert Carroll Eichelberger - Robbie to his mother - started using drugs before he reached puberty.
By age 12, he had run away from home. In his 20s, he was in and out of Washington County District Court on charges that included assault and burglary. In his 30s, he added credit-card theft and eluding police to his record. And at 35, he and his girlfriend were selling prescription drugs to high school students to support their own addictions. Last year, one of those teenagers died.
"I know my saying 'I'm sorry' won't bring him back, but I am sorry. I wish it had never happened," a tearful Eichelberger said yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, just before he was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for distributing the methadone that killed 17-year-old Harry L. "Trey" Angle.
Eichelberger's case was the second of its kind filed in Maryland since the early 1990s. It relied on a seldom-used federal statute that carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years for those convicted of distributing drugs that result in death - essentially holding dealers accountable for their products' effects.
Interest in the federal charge has risen. During the past year, the U.S. attorney's office for Maryland has opened at least five investigations into drug-induced deaths based on it, and the local Drug Enforcement Administration office is working on a sixth.
None of those investigations has led to federal charges in Maryland. But in Virginia last month, a 19-year-old man was charged under the statute after allegedly distributing heroin that led to an overdose death. Two other defendants in the case, in which police uncovered a ring of young heroin users and dealers living in the state's affluent suburbs, were charged with drug distribution that caused the same user to overdose half a year earlier. Both charges carry a 20-year minimum sentence.
When Eichelberger's case came up last year, the U.S. attorney's office in Maryland began exploring whether the statute might apply. Prosecutors would have to link Angle's death definitively to his dealers - a near-impossible task in many drug overdose cases. Users often buy from multiple street sources, making it difficult to identify the one whose drugs led to the fatal dose.
But Angle's case was different. Friends knew where he got the methadone, and Eichelberger's girlfriend, Kathleen Ann Harris, had left a damning message on Angle's phone days after he died, according to his mother, Laureen Valentine. She said Harris wanted to know if he needed more drugs.
