A six-year prison sentence was handed down after an emotional sentencing hearing Monday in which a Santa Clarita Valley family gave victim-impact statements about a loved one who died from a fentanyl overdose.
Skyler Mitchell, 26, who’s been in federal custody since her November 2022 arrest on drug charges, was given a sentence well below the prosecutor’s recommendation.
She pleaded guilty to selling 18-year-old Jax Markley five “Percs,” a street name for the fentanyl-laced pills, despite having previously acknowledged witnessing a fentanyl overdose, according to the prosecution’s sentencing report.
However, federal prosecutors sought less than the maximum for Mitchell, citing “important mitigating circumstances” that included a “particularly devastating childhood.”
Judge Stephen V. Wilson was asked to consider the statements of profound loss shared by the Markley family weighed against Mitchell’s history of experiencing physical, sexual and emotional abuse while she was in and out of protective custody as a child, introduced to drug use at age 12 by her mother’s boyfriend and a drug addiction so severe she was briefly in a coma after her arrest.
The maximum sentence was 20 years, and the federal probation report called for a 13-year sentence. Mitchell agreed not to seek a sentence of less than 10 years as part of her plea agreement.
“A sentence of 144 months’ imprisonment accounts for the mitigating circumstances in this case and is sufficient, but not greater than necessary, to achieve the purposes set forth in (federal law),” wrote Joseph T. McNally, acting United States attorney, in a March 4 sentencing report from the prosecution, who also was asking for 10 years of supervised release.
Victim statements
Wilson received statements from both Matt and Gabrielle Markley, Jax’s father and older sister respectively, ahead of Mitchell’s sentencing.
Gabrielle Markley wrote that she felt a host of what federal officials refer to as “normal reactions to a traumatic event” in a questionnaire about her loss.
Anger, anxiety, fear, grief, guilt, numbness, repeated memory of crime, sleep loss, nightmares, appetite change, unsafe, chronic fatigue, trouble concentrating, easily startled, forgetfulness, depression and uncontrolled crying were all checked off on impacts that Gabrielle Markley said she was feeling due to her loss.
“We were nine years apart in age, and in a lot of ways I felt like their third parent,” she wrote on her victim impact statement, adding she knew Jax wasn’t “a perfect person,” she wrote, “but our family was always centered around making sure Jax was cared for and loved. Having that center ripped away has destroyed my family, and I will never get it back.”
Matt Markley wrote about how Jax Markley was self-medicating, unbeknownst to the family, in part to deal with what he described as “debilitating depression and anxiety,” due in part to Jax’s challenging journey as a transgender binary teenager.
“The fentanyl that took Jax’s life was disguised as legitimate medication that, for whatever reason, Jax had been convinced to believe might help with their condition,” Matt Markley wrote.
Jax was barely 16 when Mitchell first sold narcotics to Jax after they met online, he added Monday.
Matt Markley, who also became involved in advocacy around fentanyl concerns after Jax’s death, asked for a lengthier sentence.
“The callous disregard of anyone who knowingly and willingly places another person in mortal danger for personal profit can simply not be trusted in the community,” Matt Markley wrote in his statement. “One who targets minors as the defendant did, simply cannot be allowed to walk among us in any community.”
Sentencing factors
The “defendant’s crime was craven and reflected her valuing her own personal profit and drug use over the health, well-being, and the life of victim (Jax Markley),” McNally wrote in his recommendation. “A lengthy term of imprisonment is critical to sending a message of general deterrence: Those who sell fentanyl will face meaningful punishment.”
The case was investigated by the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department’s Overdose Response Task Force, an investigation that was started locally by Sgt. Jason Viger, a former narcotics investigator who was later promoted to the Homicide Bureau, before dying in a fatal car crash last year.
The task force brought the case federal because, at the time, the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office was not seeking murder charges for overdose-related drug deaths, according to officials at the time.
One of the first cases they took on was a pair of overdose deaths in Santa Clarita within about 10 days of each other: Cameron Kouleyan and Alyssa Dies.
In May, Judge John Walter sentenced Dominick Alvarado to 15 years in prison for his role in both deaths, going above the prosecution’s request and the terms of Alvarado’s plea deal.
However, in this case, the U.S. Attorney’s Office also noted a number of different circumstances.
The severity of addiction for Mitchell was noted in the court documents for her sentencing, and prosecutors stated they did not believe she had profited significantly from her drug trade.
Federal prosecutors wrote Mitchell was living with her mother at the time of her arrest and selling narcotics to support a 7-gram-per-day drug habit, which would normally be a lethal amount.
Mitchell’s physical health was so compromised from her drug use that she ended up going into seizures and then a coma when her sobriety was forced in custody, according to a counselor who evaluated her.
However, in court documents, Mitchell acknowledged the experience was her “rock bottom,” a term addicts often use to describe an event that represents a turning point.
Mitchell grew up in a household in which both parents battled addiction, according to the sentencing report from an interview with a social worker. From the ages of 2 to 14, her custody was referred to social services at least 16 times, per the report.
In 2020, she became addicted to Percocet as the result of a car crash that left her injured, and her drug problem spiraled out of control from that point, according to the statement from her attorney. Within three years, she was smoking and snorting fentanyl daily.
Reactions
Lt. Robert Dean of the Overdose Response Task Force declined to comment on Mitchell’s sentence Monday, but he said he was proud of the task force’s work and the resulting conviction, which came from months and months of work.
“We’re happy with the conviction, with the process,” he said in a phone conversation Monday. “We’re happy that we were able to take Jax Markley’s case up, and detectives did a phenomenal job investigating it. We were able to identify the suspect who ultimately pled out in this case and was convicted.”
Matt Markley said he was extremely appreciative of the work of the LASD Overdose Response Task Force, and also that they stood by him in court Monday. It was a stark contrast to his disappointment with Wilson and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which he felt had “blindsided” him at sentencing.
“All accounts were that the baseline we were looking at was 10 to 12 years,” he said, referring to Mitchell’s potential sentence.
“We had agreed to a plea deal with the defense at a minimum of 10 years, they signed off on it,” Markley said in a phone interview after the hearing. “Nowhere did anybody mention that it could come out to be less right. And this is a problem.”
Matt Markley wants to continue to be an advocate regarding fentanyl, the dangers it poses and how the drug is discussed. He also thought there should be legislation, or at least stiffer consequences for dealing in counterfeit pharmaceuticals, which is how Jax Markley and so many others are killed each year from fentanyl.
“We had a strong case for second-degree murder, but for political reasons, (former District Attorney) George Gascén wanted to reduce it to involuntary manslaughter,” Matt Markley said, sharing part of what got him involved in advocacy in the first place.
“We thought we were doing the right thing, by us, by Jax and by other victims, to take this to the AUSA. I thought we had everything we needed to go after a charge that would have resulted in a mandatory minimum of 20 years. We thought it was well understood that, in spite of the evidence being very strong, we were willing to compromise somewhat with the defense.”
