7 Numbers That Explain How PA Prosecutes Fatal Overdoses

Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit newsroom producing investigative and public-service journalism that holds power to account and drives positive change in Pennsylvania. Sign up for our free newsletters.

A version of this story first appeared in The Investigator, a weekly newsletter by Spotlight PA featuring the best investigative and accountability journalism from across Pennsylvania. Sign up for free here.

By Ed Mahon | Spotlight PA

For more than a year, Spotlight PA as been covering an emotionally charged and hotly debated issue in Pennsylvania: whether and how to prosecute people who supply the drugs that caused a fatal overdose.

It’s a timely topic, even as overdose deaths decline. These cases — sometimes known as drug delivery resulting in death or drug-induced homicide — have led to hundreds of prison sentences in Pennsylvania. The approach divides families who have suffered similar tragedies, with some seeing prosecution as an appropriate step toward accountability and others saying the charges frequently target fellow drug users instead of large-scale dealers.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently declined to add new legal protections for defendants accused of providing drugs that caused a deadly overdose, with justices saying it’s up to the General Assembly to change how the law works. Past efforts to limit the use of these charges have not gone far in the state legislature.

Here’s a by-the-numbers look at the issue.

0 — the number of lawmakers who in 2011 voted against legislation that paved the way for an expanded use of the charge in Pennsylvania. The bill, which was signed into law by then-Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, effectively removed a requirement for there to be a finding of malice for drug delivery resulting in death cases.

1 — where Pennsylvania ranks for drug-induced homicide cases compared to other states, according to data from the Action Lab at Northeastern University. The researchers’ analysis is based on media mentions, and while it does not account for all cases, they said the work represents “the most exhaustive and only nationwide dataset attempting to track” these types of charges.

The group’s data show this type of charge being used hundreds more times in Pennsylvania than in other states from 2011 through 2022. Its drug-induced homicide database had more than 500 entries for Pennsylvania during that time period; the next closest states were Ohio and Wisconsin, which each had fewer than 320 such records. The majority of states had fewer than 100 examples in the database.

2 — the number of years Pennsylvania prosecutors have to bring these types of charges before a statute of limitations applies. Legislation in the state Capitol would extend the statute of limitations to five years, so that local law enforcement officials have more time to build these cases. Another bill would eliminate the statute of limitations entirely after a fatal overdose, while making other changes to the law.

6 — the number of states that provided an “affirmative defense to prosecution” on the charges for people who made “good faith efforts to seek emergency assistance” as of 2024, according to one national analysis. Pennsylvania was not one of them. This type of legal protection is important because it could influence whether someone calls 911 for help if someone overdoses — which is one of the most common concerns about drug-induced homicide laws.

C. Melissa Owen, an attorney and president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said Pennsylvania should expand “Good Samaritan” protections.

“It is unthinkable that joint drug use can be made a homicide,” she told Spotlight PA.

40 — the maximum number of years a person can spend in state prison for a drug delivery resulting in death conviction in Pennsylvania. Attorneys say the threat of such a lengthy sentence can pressure defendants into accepting guilty pleas.

684 — the number of criminal cases with this charge filed in Pennsylvania from 2021 through 2025, according to state court data. Lancaster, Monroe, Cumberland, and York Counties led the state, accounting for a disproportionate share of cases compared to their total populations, a Spotlight PA review shows.

21,392 — the amount of drug overdose deaths in Pennsylvania from 2021 through 2025, according to state data from early October. (Data for 2025 are preliminary.) Most overdose deaths do not lead to drug delivery resulting in death cases, and the lack of prosecutions has frustrated some family members of overdose victims.

This investigation was supported with funding from the Data-Driven Reporting Project. The Data-Driven Reporting Project is funded by Arnold Ventures and the Google News Initiative in partnership with Northwestern University | Medill.

BEFORE YOU GO… If you learned something from this article, pay it forward and contribute to Spotlight PA at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.