NEW YORK — “A man gotta have a code.”
Those were the infamous words of Omar Little, “The Wire” strongman created by writer and producer David Simon and brought to life by actor Michael K. Williams, who died from a fentanyl overdose in 2021.
Simon, who created the popular HBO series about Baltimore’s drug war, got his writing juices flowing again, this time in a leniency plea to a judge sentencing an accused dealer charged with selling the deadly drugs to Williams.
“Mike was always aware that addiction and the impulse toward addiction would remain a constant in his life.” Simon wrote to Manhattan Federal Court Judge Ronnie Abrams.
“He spoke of it to me bluntly at points and he never discounted the threat. At the same time, in all of his address of these struggles, Michael always declared that he was responsible for himself, that the decision whether to use or to cease using would always be his own. When one of his previous sources of supply — not a dealer, but a co-user — was discovered to have some proximity to our film sets, Michael insisted that the matter was to be addressed by changes in his own behavior rather than anything punitive to anyone else. I never failed to see him take responsibility for himself and his decisions.”
Simon was seeking leniency for Carlos Macci, 71, one of four men accused of supplying Williams, with a dose of fentanyl-laced cocaine, which was linked to the actor’s overdose death on Sept. 6, 2021.
Williams was found dead by his nephew inside his Kent Avenue penthouse in Williamsburg on Sept. 6. Police later found a glassine envelope containing drugs in the apartment.
Prosecutors said Macci, along with Hector Robles, 57, and Luis Cruz, 56, were members of the drug crew that continued to deal heroin laced with fentanyl throughout Brooklyn — selling it “in broad daylight” — despite knowing that Williams had died after consuming their product.
Irvin “Green Eyes” Cartegena, is accused of handing Williams the lethal drugs last September in a caught-on-video transaction.
Macci, 71, who pleaded guilty in April to narcotics conspiracy.
Simon said that Williams, even in death, would want Macci to get a break.
“I know that Michael would look upon the undone and desolate life of Mr. Macci and know two things with certainty,” Simon wrote. “First, that it was Michael who bears the fuller responsibility for what happened. And second, no possible good can come from incarcerating a 71-year-old soul, largely illiterate, who has himself struggled with a lifetime of addiction and who has not engaged in street-level sales of narcotics with ambitions of success and profit but rather as someone caught up in the diaspora of addiction himself.”
