Former political donor Ed Buck was convicted Tuesday of a series of federal charges, including providing methamphetamine to two men who died in his West Hollywood apartment.
Buck was convicted of all nine counts he was facing. Jurors deliberated for just 4 1/2 hours before reaching their verdict.
Buck was convicted in Los Angeles federal court of two counts of distribution of controlled substances resulting in death, stemming from the deaths of Gemmel Moore in July 2017 and Timothy Dean in January 2019. Those charges both carry 20-year mandatory minimums.
Buck was also convicted of enticing Moore and another man to travel to Los Angeles to engage in prostitution; knowingly and intentionally distributing methamphetamine; and using his West Hollywood apartment for the purpose of distributing narcotics such as methamphetamine, and the sedatives gamma hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) and clonazepam.
A prosecutor told jurors Friday that Buck caused the deaths of Moore and Dean as a result of his “fetish” for injecting men with increasing doses of methamphetamine until they became comatose, but the defense countered that the victims had underlying medical conditions that ended their lives.
“He would find desolate, vulnerable victims and push meth on them over and over … until they went unconscious,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Lindsay Bailey alleged in her closing argument. “That’s what he liked about it — the power gave him sexual gratification. … Every time he stuck a needle in someone’s arm, he was playing God. And he never stopped — not even after two men died.”
Ludlow Creary II, one of Buck’s attorneys, argued that his client actually did nothing more than enjoy party-and-play sessions involving drugs and sex with men he met online. Buck could not be held responsible for the serious medical conditions that caused the deaths of the two men at his apartment 18 months apart, the attorney said.
“This is a subculture, a lifestyle that may be shocking to some of us,” Creary said during his summation. “Everyone involved was there voluntarily.”
Buck, who has reportedly given more than $500,000 to mostly Democratic politicians and causes since 2000, declined to testify in his own defense.
Over the course of eight days, federal prosecutors put on more than 20 witnesses, including four men who told of smoking methamphetamine that Buck provided and then being pressured to allow the defendant to shoot them up with the drug.
One of the men testified that he passed out after being given several injections, and then managed to rouse himself, leave the apartment and go to a nearby gas station, where he called paramedics who saved his life.
Prosecutors said Buck exploited vulnerable, primarily Black men by paying them to come to his home, use drugs and engage in sex play to satisfy a fetish.
The defense called just one witness to the stand. Dr. Marvin Pietruszka, who runs a private autopsy service in the San Fernando Valley, testified Friday that he analyzed photos, slides and medical reports on the bodies of Moore and Dean, finding that both men had serious underlying medical conditions that caused their deaths. Methamphetamine, he told the jury, did not kill either of the men.
Moore, Pietruszka said, died of complications from AIDS and pulmonary edema, while Dean died 18 months later, also in Buck’s apartment, of alcohol poisoning and heart disease.
Prosecution witnesses, including a county medical examiner, testified that both men died from lethal overdoses of methamphetamine.
In his closing argument, Creary appeared to shock the courtroom by using a racial slur while blaming the prosecution for trying to put forth “the racist notion that Black men have no morals … no self-control,” and that Buck somehow was so powerful that he could force men against their wills to come to his apartment and engage in party-and-play.
“You had a bunch of Black men … they had no say in the matter,” the defense attorney said. “As if they had no free will, as if they had no ability to say no.”
Creary continued, “Did Ed Buck force them to do anything? No, he didn’t.”
In her rebuttal, Assistant U.S. Attorney Chelsea Norell refuted Creary’s assertion that Buck’s party-and-play lifestyle was on trial.
“It is not an attack on a gay subculture,” she said. “This is about an unbroken pattern of Buck preying on vulnerable, addicted men … Buck specifically targeted people who did not have a lot of good choices.”
Norell told the jury that Pietruszka’s testimony in favor of the defense theory depended on “who is footing the bill,” and showed the panel the doctor’s testimony from a previous trial in which he contradicted what he said in the Buck case about toxicity levels of methamphetamine.
“You’d have to believe that Buck is the unluckiest person in the world — that two people would show up at his apartment and die 18 months apart,” the prosecutor said.