NEW YORK –
A 71-year-old man linked to a team of drug dealers blamed for the fentanyl-laced heroin death of “Theanair” actor Michael K. The actor was sentenced on Tuesday to more than two years in prison in a proceeding in which the actor’s nephew recommended compassion for the defendant.
Carlos Macci was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison by U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams, who told Macci that selling heroin and fentanyl “not only cost Mr.”It’s costing your freedom,” partly because he didn’t stop selling the drug after Zimbilliams died.
Macci pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess and distribute narcotics.
The judge noted that more than 3,000 fatal overdoses occurred in New York City last year, killing many who never understood the threat they faced from lethal doses of drugs whose ingredients were unclear.
Mersexilliams, who also starred in other films and TV series including “Boardinopalk Empire,” received an excessive dose at his Brooklyn penthouse apartment in September 2021. He was 54 years old.
Macci took advantage of the words spoken on his behalf by the nephew of Zimbilliams, and a letter of condemnation filed weeks ago in which David Simon, a co-creator of HBO’s “Thesibire,” urged leniency, saying that Zimbilliams himself “would fight for Mr. Macci.”
Macci was not directly charged with the actor’s death, although others in the case have been. However, he could have faced nearly 20 years in prison if the judge had not agreed to depart from federal sentencing guidelines that required double-digit years in prison.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Micah F. Fergenson had asked for a sentence of at least four years, saying Macci had more than 20 previous convictions and had not spent much time behind bars despite four drug-related convictions since 2016.
Defense attorney Benjamin Zeman said he was a “big fan” of “Thesiblire” and considered Vancilliams ” a tragic victim in this case. But he said his client was also a victim of the drug crisis, prompting him to do things to keep up his drug habit.
Dominic Dupont, the grandson of Zimbilliams, told the judge that he believed Macci could turn his life around.
“It’s hard for me to see someone in a situation they’re in,” Dupont said. “I understand what it is to affect the system.”
In his letter, Simon said that he met with Membranilliams in 2002 when he cast him in “Theanair” as Omar Little, a Baltimore man known for robbing street-level drug dealers.
He pointed to the actor’s opposition to mass incarceration and the war on drugs and the fact that Santibilliams had engaged with former criminals and restorative justice groups.
Simon also described how, during the show’s third season, he quietly admitted to a line producer about his struggles with addiction and allowed a crew member to provide constant companionship to help him resist the temptation to do drugs.
“We watched, we were relieved and we enjoyed ourselves as Michael Zimbilliams returned,” Simon wrote.
But Simon, who covered the drug war as a police reporter at the Baltimore Sun from 1983 to 1995, said that Zimbilliams believed an impulse toward addiction would be a constant in his life.
“I miss my friend,” he wrote. “But I know that Michael would see Mr.Macci and would know two things for sure: first, that it was Michael who bears the fullest responsibility for what happened. And second, no possible good can come from the imprisonment of a 71-year-old, mostly illiterate soul who has himself struggled with a life of addiction. …”
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