Jeremiah David Carlton, 21, of Canyon Lake is accused in the death of the teenager, identified in court documents only as “J.G.”

Carlton is charged with second-degree murder, transportation of controlled substances for sale and possession of controlled substances for sale.

During a pretrial hearing Tuesday at the Southwest Justice Center in Murrieta, Riverside County Superior Court Judge John Monterosso conferred with the prosecution and defense regarding a specific date for the next stage of proceedings, and both sides indicated they would be prepared to move forward at the end of next month.

Carlton is being held in lieu of $1 million bail at the Byrd Detention Center.

His co-defendant, 21-year-old Raymond Gene Tyrrell of French Valley, who was charged separately, pleaded guilty in July to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to three years in state prison. However, due to the amount of time he’d already spent in jail awaiting disposition of the case, along with other sentencing credits, Judge Stephen Gallon converted his prison term to what’s known as a “paper commitment,” enabling Tyrrell to instantly go on parole.

Sgt. Rick Espinoza of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department alleged that Carlton and Tyrrell provided the drugs that led to the death of J.G. on the night of Feb. 24, 2021, at a residence in the 35000 block of Sugar Maple Street, near Leon Road.

Espinoza said deputies were called to the location to investigate two possible fentanyl poisonings and discovered the girl and a man, whose identity was not released, comatose. Both were taken to a regional trauma center, where the man was revived but the girl succumbed to the toxic ingestion.

“Detectives conducted an investigation and developed information that this was possibly a homicide,” the sergeant said, declining to elaborate on the circumstances.

Tyrrell was summoned to the sheriff’s Southwest station in Murrieta a day later and interviewed by detectives, after which he was taken into custody. Carlton was served with an arrest warrant and taken into custody at his residence.

Neither defendant had documented prior felony convictions.

Since February 2021, the District Attorney’s Office has charged over 30 people countywide in connection with fentanyl poisonings.

In November, prosecutors closed the books on the county’s first fentanyl murder case to go before a jury, culminating in the conviction of 34- year-old Vicente David Romero, who was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for the 2020 death of a Temecula woman. District Attorney Mike Hestrin said it was the first fentanyl murder conviction in the state.

According to public health statistics, there were 550 known fentanyl- related fatalities countywide in 2023, a 9% increase from 2022, when there were 503.

Fentanyl is manufactured in overseas labs, principally in China, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which says the synthetic opioid is smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border by cartels.

Fentanyl is 80-100 times more potent than morphine and can be mixed into any number of street narcotics and prescription drugs, without a user knowing what he or she is consuming. Ingestion of only two milligrams can be fatal.

Fentanyl is the leading cause of death for Americans between 18 and 45 years old.

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NEW YORK (AP) — The hush money case against former President Donald Trump appears headed back to a New York court after a federal judge showed little inclination Tuesday to let Trump move the history-making prosecution to federal court.

Changing courts could give Trump a new avenue to try to get the case thrown out. Hoping to get to federal court, Trump’s lawyers argue that he was acting in his capacity as president when he hired and paid a personal attorney who orchestrated payouts to squelch allegations of extramarital sex — payouts that are at the heart of Manhattan prosecutors’ case against Trump.

After a three-hour hearing that featured surprise testimony from a Trump company insider, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein told a packed courtroom that he was not ready to make a “firm ruling” but saw “no relationship to any official act of the president” in the alleged conduct that made Trump the first former president ever charged with a crime.

“There’s no reason to believe that an equal measure of justice could not be rendered by the state court,” Hellerstein added. He said his remarks reflected his “present attitudes,” and a formal written ruling will follow within two weeks.

Lawyers for both sides declined to comment after the hearing.

Trump, a Republican, pleaded not guilty in April to state felony charges of falsifying business records to hide 2016 hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. Trump has denied having had sexual encounters with either woman.

According to the indictment, Trump fudged records at his company to cover up the nature of payments made in 2017 to his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to compensate him for arranging to buy the women’s silence and fronting the money for Daniels.

Trump’s lawyers have said those payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses and not part of any cover-up.

Pressed by Hellerstein to prove it, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche called the legal chief of Trump’s company to the witness stand, though attorneys for both sides last week had agreed they would not call witnesses at the hearing.

Alan Garten, the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, testified that he believed the payments were partly reimbursements for the money that Cohen had paid Daniels, and partly to compensate him for “the role that he was playing as counsel” for Trump’s personal matters.

However, Garten said he knew of no written retainer agreement between Trump and Cohen, though Trump’s attorneys “typically” had them. On being shown some of Trump’s ledgers, Garten also testified that “the vast majority” of attorney payments were accompanied by some description of the lawyers’ work, though there was no such description for the monthly $35,000 payments that went to Cohen throughout 2017. Company documents recorded them generally as legal expenses.

Garten said he sometimes referred to Cohen non-corporate matters involving Trump and his wife, Melania, but wasn’t sure what Cohen did about those things.

After hearing Garten’s testimony and arguments from both sides’ lawyers, Hellerstein said the evidence suggested that Cohen “was hired privately, not under color of any presidential office or related to it.”

“We have the invoices” showing what Cohen was paid, the judge noted. “But no proof of what he did.”

U.S. law allows criminal prosecutions to be moved from state to federal court if they involve actions taken by federal government officials as part of their official duties, among other qualifications.

While requests to move criminal cases from state to federal court are rarely granted, the prosecution of Trump is unprecedented.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is bringing the hush money case, has argued that nothing about the payoffs to either Cohen or the women involved Trump’s official duties as president.

If the case is moved to federal court, Trump’s lawyers could try to get the charges dismissed on the grounds that federal officials are immune from criminal prosecution over actions they take as part of their official job duties.

A shift to federal court would also mean that jurors would potentially be drawn not only from heavily Democratic Manhattan, where Trump is wildly unpopular, but also from a handful of suburban counties north of the city where he has more political support.

In state court, a criminal trial was set for March 25 — in the thick of the primary season before next year’s November presidential election. Trump is currently the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

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Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty Tuesday to three criminal charges, formally taking responsibility for its part in an opioid epidemic that has contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths but also angering critics who want to see individuals held accountable, in addition to the company.

In a virtual hearing with a federal judge in Newark, New Jersey, the OxyContin maker admitted impeding the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s efforts to combat the addiction crisis.

Purdue acknowledged that it had not maintained an effective program to prevent prescription drugs from being diverted to the black market, even though it had told the DEA it did have such a program, and that it provided misleading information to the agency as a way to boost company manufacturing quotas.

It also admitted paying doctors through a speakers program to induce them to write more prescriptions for its painkillers.

And it admitted paying an electronic medical records company to send doctors information on patients that encouraged them to prescribe opioids.

The guilty pleas were entered by Purdue board chairperson Steve Miller on behalf of the company. They were part of a criminal and civil settlement announced last month between the Stamford, Connecticut-based company and the Justice Department.

The deal includes $8.3 billion in penalties and forfeitures, but the company is on the hook for a direct payment to the federal government of only a fraction of that, $225 million. It would pay the smaller amount as long as it executes a settlement moving through federal bankruptcy court with state and local governments and other entities suing it over the toll of the opioid epidemic.

Members of the wealthy Sackler family who own the company have also agreed to pay $225 million to the federal government to settle civil claims. No criminal charges have been filed against family members, although their deal leaves open the possibility of that in the future.

“Having our plea accepted in federal court, and taking responsibility for past misconduct, is an essential step to preserve billions of dollars of value” for the settlement it is pursuing through bankruptcy court, the company said in a statement.

“We continue to work tirelessly to build additional support for a proposed bankruptcy settlement, which would direct the overwhelming majority of the settlement funds to state, local and tribal governments for the purpose of abating the opioid crisis,” the statement read.

Purdue’s plea to federal crimes provides only minor comfort for advocates who want to see harsher penalties for the OxyContin maker and its owners.

The ongoing drug overdose crisis, which appears to be worsening during the coronavirus pandemic, has contributed to the deaths of more than 470,000 Americans over the past two decades, most of those from opioids both legal and illicit.

Cynthia Munger, whose son is in recovery from opioid addiction after being prescribed OxyContin more than a decade ago as a high school baseball player with a shoulder injury, is among the activists pushing for Purdue owners and company officials to be charged with crimes.

“Until we do that and we stop accusing brick and mortar and not individuals, nothing will change,” said Munger, who lives in Wayne, Pennsylvania.

The attorneys general for about half the states opposed the federal settlement, as well as the company’s proposed settlement in bankruptcy court. In the bankruptcy case, Purdue has proposed transforming into a public benefit corporation with its proceeds going to help address the opioid crisis.

The attorneys general and some activists are upset that despite the Sacklers giving up control of the company, the family remains wealthy and its members will not face prison or other individual penalties.

The activists say there’s no difference between the actions of the company and its owners, who also controlled Purdue’s board until the past few years.

Last week, as part of a motion to get access to more family documents, the attorneys general who oppose the deals filed documents that put members of the Sackler family at the center of Purdue’s continued push for OxyContin sales even as opioid-related deaths rose.

The newly public documents include emails among consultants from McKinsey & Corp. hired by the company to help boost the business. One from 2008, a year after the company first pleaded guilty to opioid-related crimes, says board members, including a Sackler family member, “‘blessed’ him to do whatever he thinks is necessary to ‘save the business.’”

Another McKinsey internal email details how a midlevel Purdue employee felt about the company. It offers more evidence of the Sacklers being hands-on, saying, “The brothers who started the company viewed all employees like the guys who ‘trim the hedges’ — employees should do exactly what’s asked of them and not say too much.”

The documents also describe the company trying to “supercharge” opioid sales in 2013, as reaction to the overdose crisis was taking a toll on prescribing.

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