GREEN TWP., Ohio — The TV glow beams off Mike Dusold’s face. In a red shirt, his son Brian runs around the backyard picking up Easter Eggs.
“That’s him,” Dusold says. “He just lit up the room”
In this home video, Brian is 6 years old. And as the movies continue in the kitchen, Brian points a toy at the camera.
“Hiiii yaah,” he says, chopping his arm forward.
Dusold asks his son to do that again. He wants to make sure the camera gets it. That’s when the memories come flooding back.
Suddenly, Brian’s at a baseball game — smiling as he fouls off a pitch. For Dusold, sitting in his basement now, these are hard memories to relive. Because they remind him of all the things that went wrong in his son’s adult life.
He never imagined the happy boy in these videos would grow up to struggle with addiction. He never thought he’d kick him out of his house. And when Brian eventually got sober, buying a new house with a baby girl on the way, Dusold never thought his son would die before he did.
Brian was 36 years old when police found him, dead from an overdose of drugs mixed with fentanyl. The next day, authorities found Brian’s neighbor dead on his front porch — also from a drug overdose.
“I used to view those suffering from chemical addiction as less than,” Dusold said. “Brian helped me view people differently. He taught me a lot about compassion.”
In stories like this, we’re not used to hearing about forgiveness. Especially when federal and state law allow for harsher sentences when drugs are sold that kill people. But that’s exactly why Dusold agreed to speak with us. Using his pain, Dusold wants to deliver a message of hope and forgiveness.
Starting with the woman who sold the drugs that killed Brian.
Earlier this month, that woman stood before a judge in federal court. Her attorney said she didn’t know the drugs she sold had fentanyl in them, but she could have received 20 years in prison anyway.
“We want drug dealers to be scared to sell drugs that will kill people,” said Tom Fallon, commander of the Hamilton County Heroin Task Force.
Fallon’s task force investigates overdose deaths like homicides, which often leads to increased penalties for those involved in overdose deaths. He acknowledged his detectives most often want the harshest sentence possible, but he said they also value a family's perspective.
After his son’s death, Dusold spent countless hours on the bike trail. Thinking about justice. Thinking about his son. Thinking about the defendant.
He prayed for her.
In court, Dusold spoke in favor of a lower sentence — just seven years. He said the judge took a recess because he wasn’t sure it sent a strong enough message. When the judge returned, Dusold said the woman was sentenced to seven years in prison — part of a deal federal prosecutors recommended after discussions with Dusold and the other victim’s family.
“I don’t have any hatred or animosity towards her,” Dusold said.
Not everyone in his family feels the same way.
In Hamilton County, officials tell us drug overdose deaths have decreased each of the last two years. And this year, the county coroner says suspected overdose deaths continue to fall.
Fallon said the heroin task force is a small part of the reason for that. But not everyone agrees.
“I don't think anybody sensibly says either of those trends can be tied to what we're doing in the criminal justice system,” said Douglas Berman, executive director of the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at Ohio State University.
In 2019, Berman and other colleagues wrote a letter to the Ohio Sentencing Commission, asking them to study charges involving drug overdose deaths. The commission declined. And since then, not much has changed.
“So what do we do next? The answer is: we don't know,” Berman said.
The U.S. Attorney General’s Office declined an interview request for this story, and the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association said they did not have any up-to-date data.
One nonprofit organization that studies this says Ohio ranks third in the nation in cases charging drug dealers in overdose deaths since 1974.
Back at home, Mike Dusold looks through old scrapbooks. He’s not thinking about the debate surrounding law and punishment. He’s thinking about the now 2-year-old girl his son never got to meet. And he's thinking about the time he cleaned out the new house after his son’s death.
“They’d gotten the baby room ready. Painted the walls," Dusold said. “That whole life filled with promise — and it wasn’t to be."
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