A federal prison inmate and two other people were charged Tuesday with conspiring to mail drugs into a prison California where a mailroom supervisor died this month after opening a letter that prosecutors say was laced with fentanyl and other substances.
Prosecutors say Jamar Jones, an inmate at the United States Penitentiary in Atwater, Californiaalong with Stephanie Ferreira, of Evansville, Indiana, and Jermen Rudd III, of Wentzville, Missouri, to send him drugs to sell in prison. They disguised the shipment as “legal mail” from a law firm, investigators said.
The jail’s mailroom supervisor, Marc Fischer, became ill on Aug. 9 after opening a letter addressed to Jones that contained several pages that appeared to be “soaked” or covered in drugs, according to an FBI affidavit filed in connection with the charges.
Within five minutes, the affidavit said, Fischer began stumbling and asked for medical attention, telling a coworker, “I don’t feel good, it’s pulling in my arm.” He was taken to a hospital and died two hours later.
Fischer’s cause of death remains unknown pending toxicology reports, the statement said.
Briefly touching fentanyl cannot cause overdoseand researchers have discovered that the risk of fatal overdose due to accidental exposure is low.
No attorney was listed in court records for Jones, who was expected to appear in court next week in Fresno to face the charges. A number listed in public records for Ferreira had no voicemail set. No working phone numbers for Rudd could immediately be found.
Fischer’s death is the latest serious incident at the Bureau of Prisons, which operates 122 federal prisons and has faced numerous crises in recent years, from widespread sexual abuse and others criminal misconduct by staff to chronic understaffing, escapes And notable deaths.
In 2019, the agency began copying inmate letters and other mail at several federal correctional facilities across the country, rather than delivering the original packages, in an effort to combat the smuggling of synthetic narcotics.
In 2023, a bipartisan group of congressional lawmakers introduced legislation to require the director of the Bureau of Prisons to develop a strategy to ban fentanyl and other synthetic drugs sent through the mail to federal prisons across the country. The bill has stalled in the House of Representatives.
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