First Placer fentanyl murder trial ends with guilty verdict: ‘We’re losing too many kids’

A Placer Superior Court jury on Tuesday found a man guilty of second-degree murder in the fentanyl death of his friend, a 20-year-old man who ingested a lethal dose of the synthetic opioid.

Along with the murder charge, Carson David Schewe was convicted of two felony counts of possessing drugs for sale. Schewe was accused of selling fentanyl three years ago to Kade Kristopher Webb, who died from an overdose in the bathroom of a Roseville Safeway.

Schewe, 23, of Roseville faces a maximum sentence of 21 years to life in prison; 15 years to life for the murder charge and an additional six years in prison for the drug charges.

Webb’s parents said they hope the murder verdict deters others street dealers from selling fentanyl. They also hope it shows other youths how dangerous fentanyl is and stops them from buying Percocet and Xanax pills that could be laced with fentanyl.

“Now it’s gonna give us some foundation to make change,” Kurt Webb, the victim’s father, said about the verdict. “There has to be a change. We’re losing too many kids, too many people.”

Fentanyl is a powerful and potentially addictive drug that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin. The California Department of Justice has said two milligrams of the opioid can result in overdose and potentially death.

First murder charge in fentanyl death

Two years ago, Schewe was the first defendant in Placer County to be charged with murder in a fentanyl death.

Placer County District Attorney Morgan Gire and other prosecutors in California have taken a new approach to fentanyl deaths: filing murder charges against people who sell or provide fentanyl to someone who later dies from ingesting the drugs.

In August, James Scott Teahan Jr., 34, became the fifth person in Placer County to be charged with murder in connection with a fentanyl death. Teahan is accused in the April 24 death of Stephen Windham.

Three other men, all in their 20s, have agreed to plea deals with Placer County prosecutors. Each were convicted of homicide in connection with a fentanyl death. Schewe’s fentanyl-related murder case is the first one in Placer County, and the state, that has gone to trial.

“This is an important decision by the jury, because it validates what we have been working on, which is essentially the notion that when people put profit over people’s lives, they commit murder,” said Deputy District Attorney David Tellman, who spoke to reporters on behalf of the District Attorney’s Office.

Deputy D.A. Devan Portillo, the lead prosecutor in the case, told the jury that Schewe sold a fentanyl-laced pill to his friend, Webb, moments before Webb walked into that bathroom on Dec. 3, 2021, crushed the pill and snorted it.

Portillo told jurors that Webb died within minutes; emergency responders found his body face down in the bathroom about five hours later.

Webb had been released from a drug rehab facility six days before he died. Portillo said Schewe made a video not long before meeting Webb the day he died; the video shows pills in a small plastic food storage bags containing the fentanyl that killed Webb.

“The drug he peddled was found inside Kade Webb,” the prosecutor said while playing the video in court. “Ladies and gentlemen, that’s the murder weapon.”

Rohan Beesla, one of Schewe’s defense lawyers, argued in court the prosecution failed to prove Webb died from fentanyl intoxication. He told the jury the District Attorney’s Office relied solely on a toxicology report, and the forensic pathologist — who was not called to testify in the trial — chose not to conduct an internal autopsy exam that would’ve provided a more accurate amount of how much fentanyl was in Webb’s system in the moments leading up to his death.

“That’s not how you build a murder case,” Beesla said during court Thursday as attorneys gave closing arguments.

Beesla declined to comment after the verdict was announced.

Second murder trial

Schewe’s first trial ended abruptly March 1, four days after it began, because a lab failed to provide the prosecution and the defense a report detailing a summary of results from Webb’s blood tests. Placer Superior Court Judge Michael Jones was forced to declare a mistrial, and he ordered a second trial for Schewe with a new jury.

“Coming back to the courtroom and reliving it has been difficult,” Webb’s father told reporters Tuesday.

Schewe’s second trial began Aug. 26 with jury selection. For nearly three weeks, jurors heard testimony and viewed evidence presented in the case. The jury began deliberations about 4 p.m. Thursday. The jurors returned Tuesday morning to the courtroom with their verdict.

“I think that we were just hoping that they were going through all of the evidence and making a good decision that represents the community in Placer County,” Elizabeth Dillender, Webb’s mother, said about the jury’s deliberations. “I think they were being thorough. It’s been a long few days. It’s been a long two and a half years.”

She said her family would continue to advocate on behalf of her son and others killed by fentanyl because they knew that even a murder conviction in this case wouldn’t bring her son back.

“There’s no closure when you lose a child,” Dillender said outside the courthouse in Auburn. “There’s no moving on or moving forward. It’s just every day is like Groundhog Day. And then we just get through that day, and it attaches to the next day.”

Defense says prosecution strategy won’t work

In his closing argument last week, Schewe’s attorney told the jury this prosecution strategy to target street dealers in response to a rising number of fentanyl deaths “doesn’t make common sense” and won’t work. Beesla argued that drug cartels trafficking fentanyl into the United States, wholesale suppliers and regional distributors remain “shielded” from murder liability.

The prosecutor argued that the implied malice theory to support a murder charge applies to Schewe, who knew how dangerous fentanyl was and continued to sell it as “the bodies were dropping all around him.” Portillo told the jury that Schewe had two other friends die from fentanyl overdoses, along with an ex-girlfriend who died in a bed next to him a few months before Webb died.

The defense attorney said his client was guilty of selling drugs, but he was dealing as he struggled with his own addiction. Beesla called Schewe’s statements in the social media videos “ugly,” but it was just a persona he adopted as a low-level street dealer. It was more bravado than anything, Beesla said, with Schewe holding cash in his hands that was about as much as a minimum wage worker took home in a month.

“This is not a kingpin,” Beesla said about his client.

He told the jurors that the prosecution “built a campaign of innuendo” to falsely characterize Schewe “as a monster to cause you to revile him, to be repulsed by him.”

Beesla said this trial has shown that this was a group of friends “who grew up together, started using drugs together and started snorting (crushed) pills together,” and Schewe was the friend who would get them their drugs. But the defense attorney argued no evidence was presented in the trial that shows Schewe sold them the drugs that led to their deaths.

Schewe has remained in custody at the Placer County Jail since his February 2022 arrest. The judge scheduled him to return to court Dec. 5 for his sentencing hearing.