A Haverhill man who was convicted of selling fentanyl to a 26-year-old Andover man who died of a fentanyl overdose in 2019 lost his appeal to reduce his prison sentence.
A U.S. District Court judge sentence Bernardito Carvajal, 30, to 10 years in prison last year. Carvajal had appealed the ruling, saying his sentence should be reduced because he accepted responsibility at his 2022 trial and the jury considered impermissible evidence.
Carvajal admitted to selling fentanyl to Richard Tonks, 26, of Andover. Police responded to a report of an overdose at Tonks’s home on June 13, 2019, where he was pronounced dead after efforts to revive him failed. Carvajal sold drugs to Tonks 11 times in June 2019. He continued to sell drugs after Tonks died, including a sale to an undercover police officer in July 2019.
“We have found no case where a court upheld a reduction at sentencing based solely on statements made by a defendant at trial. And that is with good reason,” the appeals court wrote in its opinion earlier this month. “Carvajal could [pleaded] guilty, before trial, to the sale of drugs to the undercover officer and to the sale of fentanyl to Tonks, all without accepting criminal liability for Tonks’s death.”
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