Homestead man gets 12 years for selling fentanyl that led to overdose death

A Homestead man will serve 12 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to selling heroin and fentanyl that killed one person and almost killed another.

Clayton Murphy, 45, was sentenced on Thursday by U.S. District Judge Mark Hornak as part of a plea agreement.

He pleaded guilty in September in two different cases to distribution and possession with intent to distribute a mixture of heroin and fentanyl, distribution of fentanyl and distribution of heroin.

The U.S. Attorney’s office said Murphy, also known as Ham, sold fentanyl to John Kitzinger. He died from an overdose on May 2, 2018, at a home in West Mifflin.

Another person, identified only as “JL” in court filings, also overdosed after buying drugs from Murphy on Feb. 1, 2019, prosecutors said.

“Specifically, the defendant killed one individual with his drug trafficking activity, and, but for the timely intervention of emergency responders equipped with Narcan, likely would have killed a second,” the government wrote.

Court filings showed Murphy previously had been arrested five times for drug dealing since 2004.

Based on the charges against him, Murphy’s advisory guideline range was significantly lower than the terms he accepted in his plea agreement — 15 to 21 months incarceration.

However, because of the loss of life, prosecutors wrote, the higher prison term was appropriate.

Out of his five previous arrests, Murphy was convicted three times. He served 2 to 4 years in prison and has previously been on probation and held on electronic home monitoring.

At the time of his arrest on the federal charges, Murphy was on pretrial release stemming from a state case.

“Despite his multiple arrests, convictions and sentences for drug trafficking, including a lengthy prison sentence, the defendant was not deterred from dealing drugs, with fatal consequences,” prosecutors wrote.