WASHINGTON — Joshua Banka’s prodigious appetite for drugs killed him. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court considered whether to hold a drug dealer who had sold heroin to Mr. Banka responsible for his death.
In 2010, just before Mr. Banka was scheduled to enter a court-ordered drug rehabilitation program, he decided to go on one last bender. He smoked marijuana; crushed, cooked and injected OxyContin; took a variety of prescription drugs; and topped them off with heroin he had bought from Marcus A. Burrage.
Mr. Burrage was convicted not only of selling the heroin but also of being responsible for the death. That second charge carried a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison.
At his trial, medical experts said the heroin had been a contributing factor in Mr. Banka’s death. But they could not say, given the other drugs he had ingested, that he would not have died anyway.
On Tuesday, Justice Elena Kagan distilled the testimony this way: “Using heroin made it more likely that he would die, but we can’t say that using heroin killed him.”
The question for the justices was the meaning of a federal law that requires a mandatory sentence “if death or serious bodily injury results from” drugs sold by a defendant. Did “results from” mean the drugs contributed to the death? Or did it require more?
Angela L. Campbell, a lawyer for Mr. Burrage, said the words of the law required a straight line from her client’s drugs to Mr. Banka’s death.
“Marcus Burrage is serving a 20-year mandatory minimum sentence for selling heroin that, according to the jury instruction that was given to the jury at the time of the trial, was not the primary cause of the death, but, rather, merely played a part in the death,” she said.
That was not enough, Ms. Campbell said, and several justices seemed prepared to agree.
“One little grain of heroin that you discover is in the body, and that person’s going away for, whatever it is, 20 years?” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked a lawyer for the federal government.
The lawyer, Benjamin J. Horwich, said there was an exception for quantities of drugs that are “too insignificant or not important enough or too insubstantial.” But as a general matter, he said, prosecutors need only show that illicit drugs contributed to the victim’s death.
Requiring prosecutors to prove more, he said, would have pernicious consequences. “A ‘but for’ test,” he said, could mean that “nothing and nobody was the cause of the victim’s death.”
But Justice Antonin Scalia said the words of the statute might mean just that. “It says it has to result in the death,” he said of the law. “And I take that to mean at least, at least, but-for causality.”
The chief justice appeared to agree. “This statute does not say if you die from taking drugs, then the person who gave you drugs, who gave you any kind of drugs, is responsible,” he said. “It says the death has to result from the heroin.”
Justice Stephen G. Breyer urged caution, saying the court should not issue a broad decision in light of the complexity of the case, Burrage v. United States, No. 12-7515. “It’s so complicated to talk about,” he said, “that you are going to mix everybody up once we start to write on this.”
“Why not just say ‘substantial’ ” — meaning the mandatory sentence would be proper if the defendant’s drugs played a substantial role in the death — “and let the lower courts figure it out, so we don’t confuse the entire bar and the entire Congress and everything?” he asked.
Justice Scalia responded: “Because of that imprecision, some poor devils will have to go to jail for a longer period than otherwise. You know, tough luck.”
In other action at the court on Tuesday, the justices declined to hear an appeal from a decision striking down an Oklahoma abortion law that required women to have an ultrasound image placed in front of them and to listen to a detailed description of the fetus before the procedure.
The ultrasound typically required a vaginal probe and had to be performed even if women objected. Some doctors said the requirement that they recite the description was a violation of medical ethics.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down the law in December, saying it conflicted with a 1992 United States Supreme Court decision protecting the constitutional right to abortion. In their brief to the justices, state officials said the law was consistent with the decision, which upheld part of a Pennsylvania law calling for informed consent from women seeking abortions.
In urging the court not to hear the case, Pruitt v. Nova Health Systems, No. 12-1170, operators of Oklahoma abortion clinics said the law was “rare if not unique.”
“This is no garden-variety ‘informed consent’ law,” their brief said. “It does not merely make information available to a woman who wishes to terminate her pregnancy; it compels women to undergo an invasive medical examination and listen to a state-scripted narrative even if they object.”
As is their custom, the justices gave no reasons for their decision not to
hear the case. Last week, the court dismissed an appeal from a decision
striking down another Oklahoma law, an effort to limit medicinal abortions.