Conviction for selling fatal fentanyl gets 12 to 24 years | News, Sports, Jobs

Luna, sitting with his attorneys, public defenders Tony Naro and Marc Gouthro, wiped his eyes frequently throughout the the four-and-a-half-hour hearing, and when it came time for him to speak, stood facing family members of the late Nicholas Wells and read from prepared remarks punctuated with apologies and sniffles.

Judge Jacalyn Colburn, after a roughly 40-minute recess she called in order to thoroughly review various documents and digest the attorneys’ sentencing arguments, handed down the sentence, with five years of the minimum suspended for 10 years, on the most serious of the four charges on which he was convicted: sale of a controlled drug-death resulting.

Luna was given credit for 604 days of time served in jail, and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service, which Colburn suggested he devote to speaking to classes or at forums on the dangers of drugs.

He is also ordered to pay $5,300 in restitution to Nicholas Wells’s father, Brandon Wells, and to undergo drug and alcohol screening in prison.

Colburn sentenced Luna to one to two years in prison, stand committed, on the two possession of cocaine charges on which he was convicted. They are to be served concurrently with the death-resulting sentence.

And on the other charge on which he was convicted-possession of fentanyl with intent to distribute- Colburn sentenced Luna to 10 to 20 years in prison, all suspended for 10 years.

While she credited Luna for “showing a desire to better” himself, to which two Valley Street Jail supervisors testified, regarding their interactions with Luna while he was in jail, Colburn also told him that it “couldn’t have been lost on you that you were playing Russian roulette every time you sold heroin or fentanyl.”

Colburn said she agreed with Luna’s attorneys that he battled addiction for many years, and that he sold drugs more to support his own habit than to turn large profits by selling in quantities.

The sides went into the hearing far apart on their sentencing recommendations: The state, represented by Assistant Attorneys General Jesse O’Neill and Heather Cherniske, asked for 20 to 40 years, while Naro and Gouthro asked for 3.5 years.

Nicholas Wells was 25 when he died on June 20, 2017, hours after his father found him lying on the ground unconscious and unresponsive just outside a basement door of their Pelham home.

Brandon Wells’s screams woke everyone in the house, four family members said while addressing the court Wednesday.

It’s an experience that Nicholas Wells’s stepsister said, “I will never forget … ever.”

The young woman, who just completed her junior year in high school at the time, said she had just completed a CPR course.

“My little brother came up to me, crying … I never thought I would be doing CPR on my brother,” she said, choking back sobs as she struggled with the words.

“I never thought seeing him outside on the ground would be our last memory of him.”

John and Carol Cavaretta, Nicholas Wells’s grandparents, jointly addressed the court, recalling a boy who was “a natural at sports” and who loved basketball but also played football on a travel team his grandfather coached.

“He wanted to quit at one point; I argued over and over with him about it,” Cavaretta said. Nicholas didn’t quit, and “we won the state championship twice,” Carol Cavaretta interjected.

When Wells took a liking to baseball, Cavaretta “went out and bought him a $140 glove. People thought I was crazy,” he said.

Carol Cavaretta remembered successfully talking her grandson out of quitting high school, and how the family began “trying to give him incentives … to stay sober,” such as including him on their annual trip to Italy.

Wells’s stepsister, toward the end of her address to the court, turned momentarily to the Luna family.

“I just want to say, to William and your family, I understand how hard it is, what you’re going through.

“I can’t help but feel bad for (Luna) and his family.

“But (family and friends) can hug (Luna), kiss him, say ‘hey how you doing?’ We can’t do that,” she said.

She expressed “hope that Mr. Luna takes this and learns from it … so nobody has to do this again.

“And because,” she added, “everyone can be a good person.”