An elderly drug dealer arrested on drug trafficking charges in February 2022 in connection to the death of actor Michael K. Williams was sentenced Tuesday to 2.5 years in prison. Carlos Macci, 72, will serve three additional years of supervised release, according to NBC News.
The first year of his release will require Macci to stay in an inpatient drug treatment facility.
Macci, one of four men arrested in connection to Williams’ death, told U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams prior to the verdict: “I would like to say, your honor, I’m sorry for what has happened.”
Williams was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment on Sept. 6, 2021, with fentanyl, parafluorofentanyl, heroin and cocaine in his system.
He was best known for his role as Omar Little in HBO’s “The Wire,” and mourned by close friends and Hollywood peers alike.
Macci was one of four men arrested in connection to Williams’ death, which spurred renewed calls to end the opioid crisis from figures like U.S. Attorney Damian Williams. For David Simon, who created “The Wire” as a treatise on drug laws, Macci is a victim, as well.
“No possible good can come from incarcerating a (72-year-old) soul, largely illiterate, who has himself struggled with a lifetime of addiction,” wrote Simon in a three-page letter to the judge in hopes of a rehabilitative sentencing rather than a punitive one, per NBC News.
Simon argued Macci “has not engaged in street-level sales of narcotics with ambitions of success and profit but rather as someone caught up in the diaspora of addiction himself,” and that even Williams would want Macci’s “remaining years” to mean “more” than prison.
The former Baltimore Sun reporter — whose acclaimed HBO series explored the devastation of low-income communities, impoverished children and nonviolent addicts as a result of the U.S.’s “War on Drugs” — was not alone in urging the judge for leniency.
“Mr. Macci was on that block [for] the exact same reason [as Williams],” Benjamin Zeman, his lawyer, told the judge. “He was there to get drugs. An additional term of incarceration won’t help Mr. Macci or Mr. Williams, and certainly won’t prevent the next overdose.”
Williams, who had openly spoken about his addictions in the past, was captured buying the fentanyl-laced heroin from Macci’s crew on surveillance footage a day before he was found dead. Macci pleaded guilty to possessing and distributing narcotics in April 2023.
While a prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Southern New York argued a lengthy sentence would “benefit the defendant” and aid in his drug rehabilitation, Judge Abrams noted Macci’s difficult childhood and old age in her relatively lenient sentencing.
Dominic Dupont, Williams’ nephew, reportedly shared a similar lack of anger outside the courthouse afterward. “Today was a sad day. There are no winners here. We lost an amazing human being,” he said, per NBC.
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