A woman named Meth was ironically convicted of smuggling a fatal dose drug into a prison that ended up killing one of their inmates.
46-year-old Johna Kay Martinez-Meth was sentenced to two years in prison after smuggling methamphetamine into a California facility where an inmate swallowed the drug-filled balloons and died. Martinez-Meth pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the death of prisoner Adrian Sepulveda, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reports.
“CDCR is committed to stopping the flow of drugs into our prisons,” Bryan Shill, deputy chief of CDCR’s Office of Correctional Safety, said in a news release. “Our investigators will diligently pursue those who smuggle narcotics into any state correctional facility, and we will seek justice through aggressive prosecution of violators.”
Sepulveda, 46, had been processed into the state prison system in 1997 and was serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole for second-degree murder out of Alameda County, Fox13 reports. Prison officials said Martinez-Meth was visiting Sepulveda at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville May 28, 2018, when she passed him several balloons filled with meth.
Martinez-Meth hid the drugs somewhere on her body, but the specifics of how she hid them were not immediately known, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Sepulveda swallowed the balloons that eventually burst inside his body. The drugs caused a fatal overdose, according to prison officials. The balloons were found during the inmate’s autopsy.
“Investigators from CDCR’s Bay Area Special Service Unit (SSU) and CMF’s Investigative Services Unit (ISU) determined Martinez-Meth visited the inmate shortly before his death,” a news release from jail officials said. “Special agents from SSU, CMF’s ISU and CDCR’s Fugitive Apprehension Team served a search warrant on Aug. 2, 2018, at Martinez-Meth’s Clearlake residence and found items including methamphetamine, balloons
and glue.”
Press play below for more on this story.
