A Woodbury man convicted by a jury of providing what wound up being a lethal dose of heroin to a Little Canada woman proclaimed his innocence during his sentencing hearing.
“I didn’t do this,” John Ray Williams, 34, told the judge when he was given a chance to speak during the proceeding last Friday inside a Ramsey County District courtroom. “They are making me out to be the perpetrator in this. … Man, I don’t want to to hold my girl when she’s 7.”
That was Williams’ way of asking Ramsey County District Judge David Higgs to give him less time than a prosecutor argued he deserved for the role he played in Nicole Marie Ritchie’s death in 2016. Williams has an infant daughter.
Despite his claims to the contrary, Higgs reminded Williams that a jury unanimously found him responsible for causing the Little Canada dental hygienist’s death by providing her with heroin the night before she died.
The 27-year-old overdosed on the drugs and died March 3, 2016.
Higgs sentenced Williams to 11 years in prison last week on one count of third-degree murder, meaning Williams’ little girl will, in fact, be about 7 or 8 by the time he’s eligible for release for good behavior.
His defense attorney, Terrance Hendricks, said the outcome is another example of Minnesota getting it wrong when it comes to the opioid epidemic. Throwing clients like his in prison — small-scale drug-dealers largely working to support their own addictions — casts blame for the overdoses left in its wake in the wrong direction, he said.
Such prosecutions don’t hurt major suppliers flooding communities with the drugs, he said.
“Minnesota is on the wrong side of history with the way it’s tackling these overdose cases,” Hendricks added.
However, Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Andrew Johnson told the judge that Ritchie’s death is a “classic” example of the dangers of using and selling opioids, and that Williams needs to be held responsible for the part he played.
CELLPHONE RECORDS, BOYFRIEND TESTIMONY AT TRIAL LEAD TO CONVICTION
Johnson used cellphone records, cell tower data and testimony from Ritchie’s boyfriend, Alexander Bigham, to prove to jurors at trial that Williams was the supplier of the lethal dose of heroin.
Hendricks tried to convince jurors that there was no way to prove who gave Ritchie her last dose, as she alone went outside to retrieve it March 2, 2016. The only person who said it came from Williams was Bigham, a self-admitted drug addict who got his girlfriend hooked on heroin and got high with her the night before she died.
Bigham testified during the trial that Williams drove the drugs over to the couple’s Little Canada apartment that night, and that Ritchie went outside to receive them.
The couple got high shortly after and Bigham passed out, he told authorities. When he woke up, he noticed that Ritchie wasn’t breathing and called Williams for advice, but she regained consciousness. He woke up to find her passed out a second time hours later. That time, he called 911, he testified, but Ritchie never woke up.
JUDGE, DEFENSE ATTORNEY, DEFENDANT SAY BOYFRIEND ALSO CULPABLE IN OVERDOSE
Both Williams and Hendricks called out Bigham’s culpability in Ritchie’s fatal overdose at the sentencing, saying it was unfair that he was never charged for it.
In exchange for his cooperation in the case, the state agreed not to prosecute Bigham for the information he provided about what happened.
Even Higgs acknowledged that Bigham shared responsibility for Ritchie’s overdose, saying during the hearing that he was “shocked” by the agreement Bigham made with authorities.
In addition to his actions the night of her death, Bigham introduced Ritchie to opioids after they started dating and got her hooked on them, according to testimony at trial.
Williams was not the only dealer the couple relied on for drugs, Hendricks said.
“Nicole Ritchie was going to get high that day, no matter where she got (the drugs) from,” he told the judge, adding: “There is no way to know, other than her boyfriend, an untrustworthy addict’s word, that she got the drugs that killed her from Williams.”
Ritchie’s family attended the sentencing but declined to offer a statement.
“The consequences of Nicole’s death will go on forever because she should be here with (her family),” Johnson said about the impact her passing has had on them.
Sentencing Williams that to a lengthy prison sentence was “fair and just,” Johnson told the judge.