The Wire co-creator and producer David Simon is urging a Manhattan judge to show leniency in sentencing the 71-year-old man who sold the fentanyl that resulted in the 2021 death of Simon’s friend, the Wire actor Michael K. Williams.
In a three-page letter obtained by The New York Times, Simon asks Federal District Court Judge Ronnie Abrams to show mercy in the upcoming sentencing of Carlos Macci, one of four men who has pleaded guilty to possessing and distributing the narcotics that took the life of the 54-year-old Williams on Sept. 6, 2021.
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“What happened to Mike is a grievous tragedy,” Simon wrote in the letter, according to The Times. “But I know that Michael would look upon the undone and desolate life of Mr. Macci and know two things with certainty: First, that it was Michael who bears the fuller responsibility for what happened.”
Simon continues that, secondly, “No possible good can come from incarcerating a 71-year-old soul, largely illiterate, who has himself struggled with a lifetime of addiction.” Simon writes that Macci sold drugs not for profit “but rather as someone caught up in the diaspora of addiction himself.”
The letter was part of a filing on Thursday by Macci’s lawyer Benjamin Zeman. The attorney is requesting that Macci be sentenced to time served, or about a year and a half. The court’s probation office has recommended a sentence of 10 years.
In his letter, Simon says that Williams always took responsibility for his drug use and was opposed to the mass incarceration that resulted from the so-called war on drugs. Simon says he is convinced that Williams “would want me to write this letter.”
In a career-making performance, Williams starred as criminal Omar Little in HBO’s The Wire, which ended a five-season run in 2008. According to Simon, Williams acknowledged his addiction during the show’s third season, agreeing to allow a crew member to serve as a constant companion “to assure some distance between Mike and temptation.”
Williams, Simon writes, was “one of the finest actors with whom I have had the honor to collaborate and one of the most thoughtful, gracious and charitable souls I could ever call a friend…I never failed to see him take responsibility for himself and his decisions.”
Macci’s sentencing – the first of the four defendants – is scheduled for later this month.
