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Political donor Ed Buck sentenced to 30 years in prison for lethal injection of 2 men with methamphetamine

LOS ANGELES – Even after two men were found dead in his apartment in California, Ed Buck did not stop injecting gay men with huge doses of methamphetamine.

Federal prosecutors said Buck’s relentless zeal to satisfy a fetish by robbing vulnerable men, often young and black, was reason enough to keep him behind bars for the rest of his life.

Buck, 67, a major donor to Democrats, LGBTQ and animal rights, was sentenced to 30 years in prison Thursday in the Los Angeles District Court for providing fatal doses of drugs, administering drugs and luring men to travel to prostitution.

“Buck uses his money and privilege to exploit the imbalance of wealth and power between him and his victims who are uninhabited, poor and / or struggling with addiction,” said Assistant Attorney General Chelsea Norel in a lawsuit. “He spent thousands of dollars on drugs and parties and sessions that destroyed lives and created insidious addictions.

Prosecutors demanded a life sentence for Buck, but his lawyers called for a decade behind bars, saying he had been sexually abused as a child and had health problems that led to his drug addiction.

Lawyers Mark Verksman and Elizabeth Little said the judge should come down to the 25-year sentence recommended by probation officials, which would allow for rehabilitation and treatment and “would be much preferable to being put to death in prison.”

Buck, a wealthy white man who worked as a male model and then made a small fortune by selling an Arizona company that saved him from bankruptcy, helped run a 1987 campaign to recall Arizona Republican Gov. Evan Sword, who eventually account was convicted of impeachment and expelled from office.

Ed Buck appears in the Supreme Court of Los Angeles on charges on September 19, 2019. Al Seib / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Buck retires at the age of 32 in the city of West Hollywood, known for its large LGBTQ community, where he lives in a rented apartment and donates more than $ 500,000 to mostly democratic causes since 2000.

His problems began when Jamel Moore was found dead in his apartment on July 27, 2017. Buck had flown Moore from Texas that morning for drug use and he was dead by sunset.

Moore’s mother, Latisha Nixon, said in a letter to the court that she hoped Buck would be given the maximum time to ruin her life and the pain she caused her family. Nixon, a certified nurse, said she could not comfort her son its the way it does for countless dying people.

“All I can think about is how my son died naked on a mattress without love around him,” Nixon said. “There is no one to hold his hand or say good things to him.

Community members and activists gathered in front of Buck’s apartment, calling for his arrest, but he remained at large. Family members and Jasmine Kanick, a political strategist, complained that Buck had escaped prosecution because of his wealth, political connections and race.

While being investigated for Moore’s death, Buck continued to pay people so he could inject them. He sent a message to a man, Timothy Dean, to express his irritation with the investigation.

About 18 months after Moore’s death, lawmakers were called to Buck’s apartment on January 7, 2019, to investigate Dean’s death.

He was not arrested even after Dean Buck’s death.

“Buck’s lack of remorse is captured in one image: while hiding in a hotel, avoiding arrest for Gemel Moore’s death, he injected Dane Brown, another young black man, with methamphetamine back to back,” Norel said.

Brown was homeless and later moved into Buck’s apartment, where he was injected with meth on most days and often several times a day.

He was hospitalized on September 4, 2019, after Buck shot him three times in successive doses. He had five times more methamphetamine in his system than Moore and Dean when they died, prosecutors said.

Brown returned less than a week later and felt he was overdosing after Buck injected him with methamphetamine three times. Like other victims who testified against Buck at last summer’s trial, Brown was nearly immobilized. He said Buck wouldn’t help him.

“Brown sat on the couch, resigned to the same fate as Moore and Dean, when he heard his dead mother shout, ‘Get up, Dane,'” Norel said.

Brown managed to get out of the apartment and reached the nearby gas station, where he called for help and was taken to hospital. His horrific account of being revived twice eventually led to Buck’s arrest.

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