NORTHAMPTON — A jury found Christopher Halla, 43, of Westfield guilty of involuntary manslaughter and tampering with evidence in Hampshire County Superior Court Monday afternoon after he sold a pill laced with a powerful synthetic opiate to 57-year-old Susan “Peach” Goldenberg of South Hadley; the drug was responsible for her death in 2024.
Following approximately four hours of deliberation, the jury’s “guilty” verdict ended a four-day trial in which jurors reviewed an array of evidence, including body-worn camera footage, text messages and testimony from the victim’s family members, toxicology specialists and police officers.
The commonwealth argued that by selling counterfeit oxycodone pills, which contained an illicit and powerful synthetic opioid called metonitazene, Halla acted recklessly and with a wanton disregard for Goldenberg’s life. Metonitazene is a synthetic opioid believed to be more potent than fentanyl.
Halla is expected to appear for sentencing on April 14.
Halla’s defense, however, argued that since metonitazene was only one of approximately 10 substances found in blood tests performed at Goldenberg’s autopsy — one of which was cocaine — the commonwealth had insufficient evidence to support the claim that Halla was directly responsible for her death by selling her the pills.
“How would Mr. Halla, a street-level guy who has a history [of drug use] … selling 30 pills to a woman, have any knowledge that they contained metonitazene or anything other than oxycodone?” Halla’s attorney Elizabeth Halloran said during her closing statement. “It is not enough, ladies and gentlemen, to show that he sold her pills. [The commonwealth] must prove that the conduct directly and substantially caused her death, and the laws require that proof to be beyond a reasonable doubt — not a suspicion, not a probability, not even a strong probability — a proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Halla’s actions caused her death. The commonwealth has not done that.”
The commonwealth, however, argued that the defendant’s choice to sell Goldenberg pills, with or without knowledge that they contained metonitazene, while purporting in a text to her that the pills were legitimate, was reckless behavior exhibiting indifference to Goldenberg’s life or safety.
“The defendant reached out to [Goldenberg] on May 19, [2024] soliciting a customer to sell drugs to for profit, and within four days of that fateful text, she died at the age of 57 — that’s no coincidence. That’s simply cause and effect,” First Assistant District Attorney Steve Gagne said during the commonwealth’s closing statement. “There’s no reasonable doubt here that it is the metonitazene, the 20 nanograms-per-milliliter in her system, that killed her … what is more dangerous and deadly than selling something when you don’t even know where you’re peddling? It’s not just that he didn’t know, he certainly acted like he knew what was in them.”
Halla’s tampering with evidence charge came when the defendant called his ex-girlfriend Danielle Morin after he was arrested for selling the counterfeit oxycodone pills to State Police Trooper Katherine Newell, who was working undercover.
During the phone call to Morin, which was played as evidence in court Monday, Halla notified Morin that he had been arrested, asked her to flush the remainder of the pills down the toilet and advised her not to take any of them.
While Halloran argued that Halla’s insistence that the rest of the counterfeit oxycodone pills be disposed of, and not ingested, after he learned that one of his customers had died was a show of concern for Morin’s safety, Gagne argued that it was Halla’s attempt to “cover his tracks.”
Testimony from Medical Examiner Christopher Perry, who performed Goldenberg’s autopsy, as well as Donna Patsun, the forensic toxicologist who analyzed Goldenberg’s blood, served as key pieces of evidence in the case.
Although Perry testified last Thursday that Goldenberg’s cause of death was determined to have been the combined effects of the various drugs in her system, which included other opioids, benzodiazepines and cocaine, he noted that metonitazene was a particularly strong respiratory depressant that can slow and halt breathing.
Patsun, however, described the level of cocaine metabolites found in Goldenberg’s blood as being relatively standard, suggesting casual use. She said that the quantities of other drugs found in Goldenberg’s blood were a “drop in the bucket,” compared with the intoxicating effects of metonitazene.
The court also reviewed text messages exchanged by Goldenberg, her friend “Ronald” and Halla discussing plans to purchase and use the pills.
While text exchanges between Ronald and Goldenberg suggest that Goldenberg initially took half of a pill and felt no effect, fearing she had been ripped off, she later wrote in a text to Ronald that she had taken a full pill after “crushing it up,” and, presumably, inhaling it, she felt pleasure and pain relief, believing the pills were safe.
“I took a whole 30 [milligram], crushed it up if you know what I mean … there have been no side effects, no pain at all,” Goldenberg texted Ronald. “I’m feeling really good but tired … I feel the meds are safe.”
A written statement released by the Northwestern district attorney’s office in 2024 stated that Halla’s case represented the first manslaughter charge brought in connection with a fatal drug overdose in the Northwestern District since the Supreme Judicial Court’s Carrillo decision in 2019, when the court held that selling heroin to someone is not reckless or dangerous enough to support a manslaughter conviction.
In that case, a University of Massachusetts Amherst graduate student was convicted for selling a fatal dose of heroin to an undergraduate student.
Halloran, in an interview Monday afternoon, said she had plans to file a notice of appeal for her client’s case. She declined to comment further on the verdict.
