Drug dealer gets 134 months in Medina heroin death
1/4/2018
Jaime McClellan pleaded guilty to selling the heroin that killed a Medina man in 2015 and was sentenced to 134 months in prison, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced Thursday.
McClellan, 33, is already serving a 180-month prison sentence in a federal prison in Kentucky. That conviction was for drug possession which began as an Anoka County investigation around the same time as the Medina death. He will serve his Hennepin County sentence for aiding and abetting third-degree murder concurrently with the federal sentence.
“We are using all of the tools at our disposal to fight back against this insidious opioid epidemic,” Freeman said. “We are filing a civil suit against the manufacturers and distributors of the prescription drugs for their fraudulent marketing and oversight. On the criminal side, we are prosecuting men like Mr. McClellan who are responsible for the deaths of their customers and who see this strictly as business. We hope Mr. McClellan follows through on his stated goal to be a better man.”
During his court appearance Wednesday morning, McClellan admitted that around Oct. 23, 2015 he sold heroin to a man he knew. McClellan also admitted knowing two other facts: that the purchaser was a drug dealer, too, and that at least some of the drugs that killed 24-year-old Alex Milun came from McClellan.
Milun was found in his bedroom about 9:25 a.m. Oct. 24, 2015 surrounded by needles, spoons and other heroin paraphernalia. Police tracked down the man who purchased the heroin, who said he was a good friend of Milun, and they often bought and injected heroin together, according to the criminal complaint. The purchaser bought heroin on the 23rd from McClellan and warned Milun to be careful because it was particularly potent.
Anoka County sheriff’s investigators had been looking into McClellan in relationship to a person who had died in their county from a heroin overdose. In November and December, those investigators made controlled drug buys from McClellan and on Dec. 16, 2015 arrested him for selling heroin. Federal authorities eventually prosecuted that case, which resulted in the 15-year sentence.
In return for McClellan’s guilty plea in Hennepin County, Anoka County agreed to drop its third-degree murder case against him in the heroin death there.
At McClellan’s sentencing Thursday afternoon, Kirsten Milun read a victim impact statement from Alex’s grandfather and one from her husband, Dick, in which he told McClellan that he had exploited Alex’s weaknesses. “You have done the damage. Go and do some good,” she read from her husband’s statement.
Then she gave her own statement, adding to what the others had said about his willingness to spend time with grandparents and parents, his love of talking politics and how much lay in store for him. Kirsten said her son worked 60 hours a week to support his habit, but never sold heroin because he did not want to hurt other addicts.
“I have no vitriol to Jaime,” she concluded. “I hope things go well for him in prison and after. We can forgive.”
When it was his turn to speak both on Wednesday and Thursday, McClellan apologized for the “harm I’ve done,” and said his life has been hard, that he had no loving parents and he was once shot in the head.
“I apologize for their loss and everything they have to deal with,” McClellan said. “I’m working on bettering myself. I live with this every day.”
McClellan Criminal Complaint (PDF)