Kade Kristopher Webb walked into the bathroom of Safeway in Roseville three years ago but never walked out. About five hours later, medics found him lifeless face down in that bathroom.
A Placer County prosecutor on Thursday told a jury that Carson David Schewe had sold fentanyl-laced pill to his friend, Webb, moments before the 20-year-old walked into the bathroom on Dec. 3, 2021, crushed the pill and snorted the deadly synthetic opioid.
“After he walked into that bathroom, he died within minutes,” said Deputy District Attorney Devan Portillo, who is prosecuting Schewe on a charge of murder in Webb’s death. “It’s pretty obvious he sold the fentanyl to Kade.”
Rohan Beesla, one of Schewe’s defense attorneys, told the jury the prosecution hadn’t proven Webb died from fentanyl intoxication. Beesla argued 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 in court Thursday afternoon as the attorneys gave closing arguments in Schewe’s murder trial.
Judge declared mistrial in March
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.
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. Now, Schewe’s fate rest in their hands.
Schewe, 23, of Roseville has remained in custody at the Placer County Jail since his February 2022 arrest. Two years ago, Schewe was the first defendant in Placer County to be charged with murder in a fentanyl death .
Fentanyl is a powerful and potentially addictive synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin. The California Department of Justice has said two milligrams of fentanyl can result in overdose and potentially 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 convinced of homicide in connection with a fentanyl death. Schewe’s fentanyl-related murder case is the first one in the county that has gone to trial.
Murder theory in fentanyl death
On Thursday, the defense attorney argued that the District Attorney’s Office is trying to “shoehorn in” the implied malice theory to file murder charges against street dealers, the “last rung on the ladder” in the fentanyl supply chain.
Beesla told the jurors this prosecution strategy to respond to a rising number of fentanyl deaths “doesn’t make common sense” and won’t work. He argued drug cartels trafficking the 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 Schewe had two other friends die from fentanyl overdoses, along with his ex-girlfriend who died in a bed next to him a few months before Webb died.
“None of that mattered. Kade didn’t matter. No one mattered,” Portillo said about Schewe. “He chose profits over life.”
Snapchat videos
The prosecutor showed the jurors videos of Schewe on Snapchat fanning numerous dollar bills and what he was selling. Portillo said Schewe bragged about his potent pills in pseudo-advertisements on social media, selling what he claimed were Percocet and Xanax pills, along with cocaine weed.
“He (Schewe) told his customers whatever you want, he’ll get you,” Portillo argued in court. “This isn’t a secret, this is an open market on Snapchat.”
Webb had been released from a drug rehab facility six days before he died. Portillo said Schewe and Webb had met hours before his death, which the prosecutor said was proven by Uber records.
Portillo told the jurors Schewe made a video not long before meeting Webb that day; the video showed 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 showing the video in court. “Ladies and gentlemen, that’s the murder weapon.”
The defense attorney told the jury that his client was guilty of selling drugs, but he was dealing as he struggled with his own drug 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,” Schewe’s attorney 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.
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