EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. (AP) - A southwestern Illinois woman who was charged in 2011 with providing the heroin that killed her boyfriend and another man went on trial again Tuesday on charges that she injected a woman with a nonfatal overdose of the drug.
Jury selection began for 29-year-old Angella Halliday’s Madison County trial on an aggravated battery count linked to the overdose last July of a Wood River woman who was revived by paramedics.
Prosecutors allege that two women bought the heroin in St. Louis and returned to the victim’s home to inject it.
Halliday was charged in 2011 with two counts of drug-induced homicide for allegedly providing the heroin that killed Benjamin Berkenbile, of Worden, that April and her boyfriend, Joshua Rogers, in a Godfrey hotel room the next month.
Prosecutors dropped the homicide charges in 2012 after Halliday pleaded guilty to delivery of a prescription anti-anxiety medication near a school. She was sentenced to four years in prison but was released on parole last May after being credited for 15 months she spent in jail.
During her sentencing hearing last year, in which her attorney argued for her to only receive probation, Halliday tearfully told the judge she didn’t recognize the damage her heroin addiction was doing to others, including her family.
“Self-destruction doesn’t happen in a vacuum,” the (Alton) Telegraph quoted her as saying. “I now think that the person doing the drugs suffers the least.”
Halliday, who holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, insisted she would seek drug counseling. She said she and her late boyfriend loved each other “in very unhealthy ways.”
“The whole time I was chasing heroin, I was unaware of the damage it was doing,” she told the judge. “I now realize that every person’s life is linked to every other person’s life.”
Halliday is jailed on $250,000 bond.
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