MUNCIE, Indiana — The Indiana Court of Appeals has upheld the convictions of two Muncie men who participated in drug transactions that led to fatal overdoses.
In August 2023, a Delaware Circuit Court jury found Joel D. West, now 33, guilty of trafficking in a controlled substance resulting in death, a Level 1 felony.
West was arrested by Yorktown police in February 2019, a few weeks after he sold meth to a 26-year-old Yorktown man, who subsequently died of an overdose.
Then-judge Linda Ralu Wolf later sentenced West to 35 years in prison.
On appeal, the Muncie man argued there was insufficient evidence to support his conviction.
However, the Indiana Court of Appeals recently ruled 3-0 that West’s conviction was upheld.
“His reasoning is an invitation to reweigh the evidence supporting the jury’s conclusion, which we cannot accept,” Judge John G. Baker wrote in the opinion.
In another recent ruling, decided by a 2-1 majority, a state appeals court upheld the trafficking-causing-death conviction of 39-year-old Muncie resident Michael Tyler Schoeff.
Prosecutors say Schoeff played a role in events that saw his girlfriend sell heroin to a local woman, who subsequently died of an overdose in 2020.
In an August 2022 trial, a Delaware Circuit Court 4 jury was unable to reach a verdict on a charge of drug trafficking resulting in death, but found the Muncie man guilty of conspiracy to commit drug trafficking.
At a second trial in April 2023, a jury found Schoeff guilty of aiding, abetting or causing trafficking in a narcotic drug resulting in death.
Judge John Feick imposed a 44-year prison sentence: 32 years for the death conviction, and 12 years as a result of the finding that Schoeff was a repeat offender.
Schoeff’s conviction was recently upheld in a ruling supported by two of the three justices.
In a dissenting opinion, the third member of the appeals panel, Judge Paul Mathias, said he agreed with Schoeff’s position that he should not have been tried a second time on the charge of dealing resulting in death.
Schoeff’s girlfriend, Vera Renee Morgan, now 35, was found guilty of dealing a controlled substance resulting in death following a trial in August 2020. She was later sentenced to 40 years in prison by Feick.
Douglas Walker is a news reporter for The Star Press. Contact him at 765-213-5851 or at dwalker@muncie.gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on the Muncie Star Press: Delaware County Dealing Death Convictions Upheld
