http://www.mywesttexas.com/articles/2009/02/07/news/top_stories/suckarieh_sentence.txt

Woman imprisoned in drug death case

A Midland woman was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison Thursday for giving Xanax to a man who went into a coma and died on April 23 last year.

by Staff Reports
Midland Reporter-Telegram

A Midland woman was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison Thursday for giving Xanax to a man who went into a coma and died on April 23 last year.
Emily Micah Suckarieh, 22, was the first of two defendants sentenced in the case involving the death of 21-year-old Brandon Moore, who had also ingested methadone purchased from Tiofila "Toffie" Santillana of Midland.
In an emotional setting in U.S. District Judge Robert Junell's courtroom, relatives of the defendant and victim gave statements about the impact of the case.
"Judge Junell read a beautiful letter from Brandon's mother Karri, in which she expressed how difficult it is to lose a child, how Brandon struggled with drugs for a long time but what a beautiful person he was," Assistant U.S. Attorney John Klassen said. "She doesn't bear any animosity toward Emily and hopes she can get her life back together.
"It was a moving day -- a tragedy from every perspective."

Klassen said Santillana, convicted in a January jury trial, will face a minimum of 20 years when sentenced on March 31 because the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration rates methadone a more dangerous drug than Xanax and the penalties for its purveyance are more severe.
Suckarieh, represented by Midland attorney Ian Cantacuzene, and Santillana, whose lawyer is Bob Garcia of Odessa, were charged with distribution of methadone and Xanax that resulted in a death.
USDEA agents, city police and county sheriff's investigators said the Xanax, an anti-anxiety medicine, "had an elongating effect" on the methadone, a synthetic narcotic prescribed to heroin addicts, starving his brain of oxygen.