Judge rejects Greybull man’s appeal for manslaughter conviction to be overturned

By: 
Nathan Oster

A Greybull man serving a 15- to 20-year prison sentence for manslaughter has suffered a setback in his bid to overturn his conviction in connection with the January 2023 overdose death of Jordan Jackson.

Anthony Fuentes was sentenced last September in Park County District Court after entering an Alford plea to manslaughter as part of a plea deal with prosecutors, who agreed to drop a lesser charge of conspiracy to deliver a controlled substance. An Alford plea is a guilty plea in which a defendant maintains innocence but admits that the prosecution’s evidence would likely result in a guilty verdict if brought to trial.

With the Alford plea, Fuentes became the first person in Wyoming to be convicted of manslaughter for selling fentanyl-laced drugs that caused the death of another person.  Jackson, a former Greybull resident, was found deceased in his Cody apartment on Jan. 2, 2023 — a day after purchasing two fentanyl-laced oxycodone pills from Fuentes. 

In March, Fuentes filed an appeal in Park County, asking for his plea to be withdrawn. Fuentes’ attorney, H. Michael Bennett, cited “ineffective assistance of counsel,” referring to Christina Cherni, the attorney who represented Fuentes throughout court proceedings in Big Horn and Park counties. The filing claimed that Cherni wrongly advised Fuentes to plead guilty to conduct that was not prohibited by the manslaughter statute, did not file a single motion challenging the state’s charge of manslaughter and counseled him to plead guilty to a series of facts that do not support a manslaughter conviction.

In his response, Park County and Prosecuting Attorney Bryan A. Skoric pointed out that as part of its agreement with Fuentes, the state agreed to dismiss a drug conspiracy charge.  Had it not, Fuentes could have faced up to 40 years of imprisonment instead of the 20 years he ultimately received. Fuentes “committed the act of involuntary manslaughter,” Skoric wrote. “An individual tragically lost his life after ingesting fentanyl-laced oxycodone provided by (Fuentes).  Whether this Court found the State provided an adequate factual basis for Appelant’s Alford plea is an issue subject to appellate review, unrelated to any ineffective assistance of counsel claim.”

Judge William Simpson had the final say. On June 17, he rejected Fuentes’ appeal for his conviction to be overturned. Fuentes has since indicated that he intends to appeal to the Wyoming Supreme Court. 

Prosecutors in Park County waited to file charges against Fuentes until his case in Big Horn County reached its conclusion.  That happened in December 2023 when Fuentes was sentenced to three to five years in prison after pleading no contest to two felony counts of possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance (fentanyl), two felony counts of delivery of a controlled substance (fentanyl) and a high misdemeanor count of possession of a controlled substance.

At his sentencing in Park County, Judge Simpson ordered that the 15- to 20-year prison sentence to run concurrently with the sentence that resulted from the Big Horn County Case.

As of Monday, the Department of Corrections listed Fuentes, 38, as being an inmate at the Wyoming Medium Security Prison in Torrington, with a projected discharge date of May 27, 2036.

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