A nationwide campaign got underway Tuesday that seeks to rectify what advocates insist are unjust classifications of deaths when the victims are killed by drunk or drug-impaired motorists, or die from ingesting drugs they didn’t realize might be lethal.
“When someone chooses to drive impaired or knowingly supplies a lethal substance, that choice carries deadly consequences,” Stop Drug Homicide founder Matt Capelouto said. “Calling these deaths `accidents’ minimizes accountability. Our goal is to drive change for the hundreds of thousands of families whose tragedies have been mislabeled for far too long.”
Capelouto, whose Temecula-based organization was instrumental in adding provisions to voter-approved Proposition 36 in 2024, has joined Mothers Against Drunk Driving founder Candace Lynne Lightner in spearheading the “Not An Accident” campaign.
The effort focuses on certain classifications contained in death certificates issued by coroners and other law enforcement officials throughout the United States. Campaign supporters argue that anyone killed in a DUI wreck or because he or she consumed a toxic controlled substance, such as fentanyl, provided by a person who knew it could have fatal consequences, should not be categorized as an “accidental death,” but victim of a criminal act.
“Deaths caused by drunk driving or the distribution of lethal drugs are not accidents,” Lightner said. “They stem from reckless, dangerous and criminal behavior. How we classify these deaths matters — to families, to the justice system and to public policy. I have opposed the term `accident’ in impaired-driving crashes for decades. My daughter’s death was not an accident; it was a homicide. And that is what her death certificate should reflect.”
Lightner, who now heads the nonprofit We Save Lives, lost her 13-year-old daughter Cari when a drunk driver struck the girl on a Fair Oaks roadside in May 1980. The child’s death motivated her grieving mother to establish MADD.
Capelouto lost his 20-year-old daughter Alexandra to fentanyl poisoning in December 2019. Like Lightner, he turned his grief into activism, seeking state legislation to establish criteria for charging drug dealers with homicide in instances where the use of controlled substances resulted in death. Despite repeated attempts in the last five years, the state Legislature has tabled proposals based on Capelouto’s objectives.
Some district attorneys statewide, following the lead of Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin, have moved forward with drug death homicide prosecutions anyway. Additionally, the authors of Prop 36 included a “Watson advisement” provision in the measure for drug offenders. It’s analogous to what convicted DUI offenders receive when they’re notified during sentencing that they may be charged with second-degree murder if they cause a future DUI crash that results in a fatality.
“With Alexandra’s Law (in Prop 36), we made it clear that drug dealers must understand the lethal nature of their actions and that future deaths can lead to homicide or murder charges,” Capelouto said. “These deaths are not accidents — they are homicides.”
The Not An Accident campaign stresses the need for reforms, including the rewrite of death classification standards, ensuring that when there are criminal convictions in DUI or drug poisoning cases, death certificates clearly document that the victim’s loss stemmed from a criminal act. The campaign also seeks upgrades to data collection and dissemination to confirm when deaths were actually the result of accidents, and when they stemmed from criminal negligence.
Further information about the campaign is available at notanaccident.info/.