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A recent ruling by the Indiana Court of Appeals in the case of a man alleged to have killed his wife after she died from a narcotic drug injection he administered raises a larger issue: criminalizing drug abuse versus prioritizing treatment.

That’s according to IU McKinney Law Professor Nicolas Terry, who was interviewed about the case of a Ripley County man whose wife died after they injected deadly fentanyl together in a September 12 story for the Indianapolis Star.

Nathaniel Walmsley was charged with felony murder after his wife, Rachel, overdosed and died after Walmsley injected her with what he claimed to have thought was heroin. Walmsley unsuccessfully filed a motion to dismiss his felony murder charge in Ripley County, arguing that injecting Rachel with drugs that they jointly purchased and possessed did not amount to dealing. The Ripley Circuit Court denied his motion and Walmsley argued that the trial court erred in its decision during oral arguments before the Indiana Court of Appeals in August.

While Professor Terry doesn't support doing away with prosecuting drug-related crimes, cases that seek to punish users for drug offenses and deaths don't target the actual causes of the addiction, Professor Terry told the IndyStar.

"They assume a kind of moral, blameworthy approach to substance use disorders," he said. "That if a terrible event has happened, then someone can and must be blamed for it. The causes of addictions are far more complex than some individual's blameworthy conduct.”

Professor Terry, Hall Render Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Hall Center for Law and Health at IU McKinney, serves on Indiana University’s Grand Challenges Scientific Leadership Team, working on the addictions crisis and is a principal investigator on addictions law and policy Grand Challenge grants. His recent publications are at https://ssrn.com/author=183691 and he is @nicolasterry on twitter.