Jury delivers guilty verdict in overdose death case

An Oneida County jury deliberated for just over two hours Friday before finding a La Crosse County woman guilty of first-degree reckless homicide (as party to the crime) in connection with the drug overdose death of a 45-year-old Rhinelander man in January 2023.
Andrea J. Walker, 44, of Bangor, faces a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison when she’s sentenced on Oct. 10.
The jury heard four days of testimony from relatives of the victim, members of law enforcement who investigated the death, toxicology analysts and experts, as well as the defendant herself before rendering their verdict at approximately 1:45 p.m. Friday.
Assistant attorney general Kari Hoffman, who prosecuted the case with Oneida County district attorney Jillian Pfeifer, and defense attorney Stephen W. Sawyer spent approximately three hours delivering closing arguments Friday morning.
In her statement, Hoffman detailed the timeline and evidence, including messages, phone records and witness testimony linking Walker and the victim to a transaction involving the delivery of methamphetamine and fentanyl in the La Crosse area in late January 2023.
For his part, Sawyer argued the state failed to prove the fifth element of the offense — that it was the drugs the victim obtained from the defendant that caused his death. He noted the state has to prove all of the elements of an offense beyond a reasonable doubt to obtain a guilty verdict and “four out of five ain’t good enough.”
He highlighted Walker’s testimony that she has a history of vomiting after ingesting fentanyl and suffered no ill effects after using the same substance as the victim did. He also argued that the victim had other opportunities between the time he received the illegal substances from Walker and it would be reasonable to hypothesize he could have procured additional drugs from a different party and it was that substance, not the drugs he obtained from Walker, that caused his fatal overdose.
In her final rebuttal, Hoffman told the jury all of the evidence showing Walker’s guilt had been laid out for them and they had to follow it in order to arrive at a just verdict.