The man who sold fatal fentanyl-laced heroin to The Wire actor Michael K. Williams was sentenced on Tuesday to 30 months in prison.
Carlos Macci, 72, was part of a four-man gang selling drugs from Brooklyn, and he sold the lethal dose to Williams, US prosecutors said.
Williams, 54, who played gangster Omar Little in the popular HBO crime drama, died of an overdose in his Brooklyn apartment on September 6, 2021.
Drug paraphernalia was discovered at the scene, police said.
Prosecutors had asked for a longer sentence of 48 months, writing in court papers: “For decades the defendant has been selling deadly narcotics: heroin and now heroin laced with fentanyl.”
US District Judge Ronnie Abrams, sentencing Macci, told him that selling drugs “not only cost Mr. Williams his life, but it’s costing your freedom," in part because he did not stop selling drugs after Williams died.
However, Williams’s nephew, Dominic Dupont, and a co-creator of The Wire, David Simon, had urged leniency for Macci.
Mr Dupont told the judge that he believed Macci can turn his life around.
“It weighs heavy on me to see someone be in a situation he’s in,” he said. “I understand what it is to be system impacted."
In his letter, Simon said he met Williams in 2002 when he cast him on The Wire, and noted the actor’s opposition to mass incarceration.
In a plea agreement, Macci pleaded guilty in April to narcotics conspiracy.
Defence lawyer Benjamin Zeman said he was a “huge fan" of The Wire, and considered Williams "a tragic victim in this case."
But he said his client was a victim, too, of the drug crisis, causing him to do things to sustain his own drug habit.
The Wire, which aired from 2002 to 2008, was set in Baltimore and told the story of the narcotics trade from the perspective of criminals, police and the people caught between them.
Williams won praise for his role as Little, as well as his performance in Boardwalk Empire, an HBO series set in Atlantic City, New Jersey during the Prohibition era of the 1920s.
