How investigators build a criminal case from drug overdose deaths like Hayden Panettiere’s

By Eric Levenson, CNN

(CNN) — The death of Hayden Panettiere last month is now the subject of a federal investigation into whether the actress obtained illicit and possibly counterfeit drugs from a dealer in Southern California, a source familiar with the investigation told CNN.

But building a criminal case from her accidental overdose death will be an uphill challenge for investigators.

Tens of thousands of people die from drug overdose deaths every year, but only a few hundred per year lead to criminal charges. Some celebrity deaths in recent years, notably those of “Friends” actor Matthew Perry and rapper Mac Miller, have led to charges. Others, like the death of the musician Prince, did not.

“These are just really difficult cases, regardless of if you’re a celebrity or if you’re just John Q. Public,” said Thaddeus Johnson, a former law enforcement official in Tennessee and senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice think tank.

The challenge for investigators lies in the gritty details. To make the case, they have to follow the trail of evidence, such as phone records, drugs and witnesses, to identify a dealer or supplier. Investigators also have to prove with toxicology, forensic pathology, and medical analysis that the specific drugs caused the victim’s death.

“Every case is different,” said CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig, a former prosecutor. “Sometimes you can make a link. Sometimes you can’t.”

These investigations require significant resources, but overdose deaths are often not prioritized by police in the same way as a fatal shooting. Celebrity deaths may be an exception, though.

“It does seem that police are more attentive to and more invested in cases that get a lot of attention when it’s a well-known person who overdoses,” Honig said.

The challenges of bringing these cases are newly relevant as investigators dig into Panettiere’s death.

Panettiere, who wrote in a memoir of her struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, was found in cardiac arrest at an apartment in Greenville, South Carolina, on August 16. Medics responded to the scene but were unable to resuscitate her.

Dispatch audio obtained from Broadcastify.com references a possible overdose. The coroner’s office ruled Tuesday she died of toxic effects of fentanyl and other substances, and the manner of death was ruled an accident.

Last week, US Attorney General Todd Blanche said bringing criminal cases in overdose deaths is a “big emphasis” of the DEA and prosecutors around the country.

“There’s a federal statute that allows us to go after – assuming we can prove who the dealer is – to go after them and put them in prison for murder. And we do it in every district in this country,” he said.

“So when we can prove – and sometimes if somebody is an addict, it’s difficult to prove who they actually got the pill from – but in the cases where we know who the dealer was, and we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person sold the death pill to the victim who then dies, that’s a federal crime and that’s something that we will readily prosecute as often as we can.”

Why criminal charges are rare

While the US sees tens of thousands of overdose deaths every year, criminal charges stemming from an overdose death are rare.

There were about 79,384 drug overdose deaths in the US in 2024, according to CDC data. That was a sharp decline from the previous few years, when more than 100,000 people died of drug overdoses.

By comparison, a total of 1,340 people were sentenced for a federal drug trafficking offense involving a drug overdose between fiscal years 2019 to 2023, according to a 2025 report from the US Sentencing Commission. That works out to about 270 cases per year.

About 95% of the cases involved fentanyl, a synthetic fentanyl analog or heroin, the commission’s report found. Most of the people selling or using drugs did not know the exact drugs involved, the report states.

Just over half of the defendants were street level dealers, and the average sentence in cases involving an overdose was 149 months, or over 12 years, the report found.

Building a criminal case out of a drug overdose requires two key things: Evidence of the drug’s source, and evidence the drug caused death.

For the first part, investigators use phone records, bank records, witnesses and other evidence to try to work their way up the chain to identify the dealer or supplier. But that can be difficult in the underground drug economy, as counterfeit pills may come from the streets or even strangers on the internet.

“Sometimes you’re chasing a ghost,” Honig said. “Sometimes you just can’t figure out where the end user got the drugs from, and once the chain goes cold, that’s it.”

The second challenge is proving that the specific drugs caused the death. The National Association of Attorneys General calls this the “lynchpin” of the case, saying “causation raises perhaps the most difficult issues in proving these cases.”

The challenge is that addicts may take many different substances, or they may be in bad health generally. This all means that the toxicology report and the medical examiner’s review is paramount in an overdose death, and those take time and resources.

“These damn cases are just so damn difficult to prove,” Johnson said. “You have to prove somebody sold the drugs. You have to prove that the drugs they sold caused the particular death. Those are different things.”

From Prince to Perry to Panettiere

Though criminal overdose cases are rare, a few high-profile deaths have resulted in charges.

On October 28, 2023, Perry, the “Friends” star, was found floating face down in his hot tub at his home in Pacific Palisades, California. The Los Angeles Medical Examiner’s Office listed the cause of death as “acute effects of ketamine” and subsequent drowning.

Five people later pleaded guilty to federal drug charges resulting from his death. The defendants were identified as a woman referred to by authorities as the “Ketamine Queen,” two doctors, Perry’s live-in personal assistant and a middle-man.

The evidence against Jasveen Singh, the so-called Ketamine Queen, included text messages, phone records and the discovery of drugs in her residence during a raid, according to federal prosecutors.

Similarly, the September 2018 death of rapper Mac Miller was determined to be an accidental overdose of fentanyl, cocaine and alcohol. Prosecutors later brought charges against men who allegedly provided the rapper counterfeit oxycodone pills containing fentanyl two days before the overdose. Two men pleaded guilty and were sentenced to nearly 12 years and 17.5 years in prison, respectively, per court records.

On the other hand, there were no criminal charges filed after the April 2016 death of Prince. Authorities said there was “no reliable evidence” of who supplied the counterfeit fentanyl-laced Vicodin pills that killed him or how he obtained them.

None of the medications found in Prince’s home was prescribed to him, according to court documents. Some bottles of opioid painkillers in his home were prescribed to an associate, and other medications were found in vitamin bottles and envelopes, search warrants showed.

In Panettiere’s case, after police responded to an emergency call when she was unresponsive, her boyfriend showed an officer a bag of her medications, according to a police report.

The coroner’s office report identified her cause of death as toxic effects of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid; 4-ANPP, a chemical used to make fentanyl; Alprazolam, a benzodiazepine commonly used to treat anxiety; Methocarbamol, a muscle relaxant; and Quetiapine, an antipsychotic drug.

Ultimately, the goal of bringing these cases is to try to crack down on organized crime and deter others from illegally distributing dangerous drugs.

“One community may be impacted by one dealer, but you take out a distribution center, you’ve maybe protected the whole West Coast or Southern California perhaps,” Johnson said. “(These cases) matter as far as in scale but also as a deterrence signal that you will be caught, you will be prosecuted, and you can no longer operate in ambiguity in these types of cases anymore.”

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CNN’s Holly Yan, Jason Morris, Karina Tsui, Alex Stambaugh and Josh Campbell contributed to this report.