A Collin County jury has sentenced Gregory Noah Honesty to 38 years in prison for supplying the fentanyl pill that killed 25-year-old Zoe Behen in November 2023, marking the county’s first murder conviction under Texas’s new statute that treats fatal fentanyl deliveries as homicide. Investigators tied Honesty to the sale through phone records, social-media messages and electronic payments, and evidence showed he continued dealing drugs while free on bond. “If you deal fentanyl and someone dies, you will be prosecuted for murder,” District Attorney Greg Willis said after the verdict. The landmark judgment underscores a broader national trend of prosecutors pursuing homicide or manslaughter charges against dealers whose customers overdose. In Hutto, Texas, authorities last month arrested 26-year-old Crystal Perez on a $1 million bond for allegedly selling fentanyl that killed 30-year-old Michael Ackerman. In Everett, Washington, police have charged a suspected dealer with controlled-substance homicide after a woman in her 40s was found dead on 4 May. Federal agents also arrested a woman linked to a rare synthetic-opioid overdose that killed an East Texas teenager in 2024. States and counties have rushed to stiffen penalties as fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 50 times stronger than heroin, continues to drive record U.S. overdose deaths. Texas allowed murder charges in such cases only this year; Collin County’s first conviction and lengthy sentence are expected to serve as a test case for the law’s deterrent potential and could influence how other jurisdictions frame future drug-induced homicide prosecutions.