A Sioux Falls woman is staring down two decades behind bars after distributing fentanyl and heroin that triggered a life-threatening overdose. Halie Sletten, 43, was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison on November 4, 2021, by District Court Judge Karen E. Schreier, following her guilty plea to Distribution of a Controlled Substance Resulting in Serious Bodily Injury.
Sletten admitted to knowingly distributing the deadly drugs on or around January 17, 2020, in the District of South Dakota. The recipient, identified only as Victim #1, injected the substances and immediately suffered a severe overdose. Paramedics arrived to find him unresponsive and administered two doses of Narcan—the opioid reversal drug—to bring him back from the brink.
According to court records, Victim #1 would not have overdosed if not for the fentanyl and heroin supplied by Sletten. The incident left him with a substantial risk of death, meeting the federal threshold for serious bodily injury under 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). Prosecutors emphasized that the drugs were pure enough to cause near-instant collapse, underscoring the lethal nature of the distribution.
Indicted by a federal grand jury on October 6, 2020, Sletten initially faced a mountain of evidence gathered by a multi-agency task force. She entered her guilty plea on August 20, 2021, avoiding trial but accepting full responsibility for the chain of events that followed her actions. In addition to her prison term, she was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $100 to the Federal Crime Victims Fund.
The investigation was a joint operation involving the Brandon Police Department, Sioux Falls Police Department, Sioux Falls Area Drug Task Force, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Hodges, who called the incident a textbook example of how street-level drug distribution fuels the national opioid crisis.
Following sentencing, Sletten was immediately taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals Service. The case stands as a stark warning: distributing fentanyl isn’t just a crime—it’s playing Russian roulette with someone else’s life, and the federal system is no longer offering leniency.
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Key Facts
- State: South Dakota
- Agency: DOJ USAO
- Category: Drug Trafficking
- Source: Official Source ↗
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