A 36-year-old man detained last year in connection with an investigation into a fentanyl overdose murder was sentenced to five years in prison on Thursday after pleading guilty to drug possession charges.
Michael Micolites, who has been incarcerated at the Lubbock County Detention Center since his arrest on January 6, 2023, appeared before the 364th District Court with his counsel, Charles Blevins, and pleaded guilty to a second-degree felony charge of possessing between 1-4 grams of fentanyl.
Micolites, who risked a prison sentence of two to twenty years, entered his plea ahead of a jury trial on September 23.
Micolites faces charges stemming from a Lubbock police investigation that began on January 5, 2023, when officers responded to a dead body complaint at the Elm Creek Apartments in the 2600 block of Milwaukee Avenue.
According to court filings, responding officers discovered the body of a 30-year-old male curled up on a bedroom floor next to a nightstand, which contained a spoon with a burned pill.
A baggie of blue tablets labeled M-30 lay on the bed.
The tablets, which were designed to resemble Percocet, actually contained the lethal synthetic opioid fentanyl.
A search of the man’s phone revealed talks between him and Micolites less than 24 hours prior, in which Micolites promised to sell him five fentanyl tablets for $50.
The next day, investigators used the phone to contact Micolites and order five additional pills.
According to the warrant, Micolites agreed to meet the officer masquerading as the man at the residence and sell the drugs.
Micolites and two others came in a black pickup truck at the apartment, where undercover officers awaited him and detained him.
Meanwhile, one of Micolites’ passengers approached detectives at the site and stated that he was “tired of this drug and the problems it was causing him.”
The passenger stated that he would do “whatever he needed to help police with this issue,” according to the records.
The passenger told investigators that Micolites had 50 tablets on him but had over 1,000 pills in his motel room.
However, a search of the room, which he shared with others, revealed approximately 29 fentanyl pills and more than 75 grams of THC wax.
The case began approximately five months before Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation allowing prosecutors to charge Micolites with murder, a crime punishable by five years to life in prison.
After the hearing, Blevins stated that his client was not a drug dealer, but rather an addict who provided narcotics to another addict.
“He definitely wasn’t out there to make money,” stated the employee. “He was selling it for what he was getting.”
He said he believes the Lubbock County District Attorney’s Office’s five-year offer reflected the evidence.
“I think the state and we also recognize and believe he just wasn’t a drug dealer, he was an addict, and he just didn’t understand fully the consequences of his actions, how great they could be,” according to him. “A fellow addict reached out for some fentanyl, he showed up and gave him some, and unfortunately that addict died.”
He stated that his client, who could have died from an overdose as well, did not believe his conduct could have resulted in such a horrible outcome and expressed regret early in the case.
“In our negotiations, that’s one of the things that the state mentioned is, there’s remorsefulness that he had in his jail calls to his family and his messages to his family, his remorse for the situation,” he told me. “And I think that helped in negotiating a lower-end sentence.”
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