PORTLAND, Maine — A Belfast man who has been incarcerated for two years will be released after the Maine Supreme Judicial Court set aside his drug conviction because the prosecution failed to prove Suboxone is a narcotic at his trial.
Christopher Sudsbury, 43, was sentenced to eight years in prison in December 2014 for aggravated trafficking of a Schedule W drug. He was convicted by a jury two months earlier, according to the court’s four-page decision issued Thursday.
Sudsbury was released Monday from the Maine State Prison in Warren, according to Jody Breton, deputy commissioner for the Maine Department of Corrections.
Sudsbury had been in custody since his arrest in January 2014, according to his attorney, Sean Ociepka of Belfast.
Because of his prior convictions, the charge was elevated to a Class A crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison and a fine of up to $50,000, the decision said.
The evidence showed that Sudsbury sold a single strip of Suboxone to a confidential informant for $25, according to the court’s ruling.
Suboxone is a prescription drug used to treat opiate addiction that contains a small amount of opium, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Suboxone is not listed as a scheduled W drug in state law. Katie Hollstrom, assistant district attorney for Waldo County, did not ask the chemist who tested the drug about its ingredients or classification as a narcotic, Ociepka said Friday.
“To prove that Sudsbury’s conduct fell within the definition of the crime charged, the state was therefore required to present evidence that Suboxone is a drug that falls within one of the listed categories of Schedule W drugs, such as ‘any compound, mixture or preparation containing narcotic drugs’ that is not listed or described in another schedule,” the decision said. “At trial, however, no evidence was presented to the jury that Suboxone or buprenorphine constituted a narcotic or fell into any other category established in Schedule W.”
Hollstrom declined to comment on the ruling on Monday.
Assistant Attorney General Patrick Larson, who prosecutes drug cases in Penobscot and Hancock counties, said Friday that by including in the charging document the fact that Suboxone is a narcotic and by asking two more questions of the chemist, the prosecutor could have proven Suboxone falls into the Schedule W category.
Those questions, Larson said, are: What is the main ingredient in Suboxone? And, how is that drug classified?
The answers should be: “buprenorphine” and “as a narcotic” to prove Suboxone falls under the Schedule W category even though it is not specifically named in the statute.
It could not be determined why Suboxone is not listed as a Schedule W drug.
Efforts to reach the governor’s spokesman, Peter Steele, and the heads of the Legislature’s Criminal Justice Committee to determine if the decision will spark an effort to add Suboxone to the Schedule W list were unsuccessful Friday and Monday.
The justices heard oral arguments in the case in October 2015 at Hermon High School. Questions then focused on whether the Maine Constitution requires police to obtain a warrant before recording a conversation in a suspect’s residence and whether the length of Sudsbury’s sentence was excessive.
Because the court set aside Sudsbury’s conviction, the justices did not rule on those issues.