Fentanyl Killed Their 6-Month-Old. The Sentence Says 40 Years. Prison Will Hold Them for 23.

The historic Elkhart County Courthouse in Goshen, seat of the county where Nichole Neely and Owen Miller were sentenced Thursday. Photo: Derek Jensen (Tysto), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

On paper, Elkhart County gave Nichole Neely and Owen Miller the most Indiana law allows for the crime they admitted. In practice, 17 of those 40 years will be spent outside a prison.

The two Elkhart parents were sentenced Thursday in Elkhart County Superior Court 3 in the January 2024 death of their 6-month-old son, The Goshen News reported. Each received 40 years in the Indiana Department of Correction, "including Recovery While Incarcerated, with 17 of those years to be served alternatively on probation," according to WNDU, citing the Goshen News. Recovery While Incarcerated is the Department of Correction's addiction-treatment program.

The boy's last evening was Jan. 18, 2024. Court documents described by ABC57 say Miller ran to a neighbor's house for help, and the neighbor, who works in the medical field, began CPR. The baby was pronounced dead at Elkhart General Hospital at 7:30 p.m. The autopsy listed the cause of death as acute fentanyl and methamphetamine toxicity, and it also noted a diaper rash, fluid in the lungs and a staph-positive blood culture.

He was not the only child in that house exposed to the drugs. Two other children were taken to the hospital and treated for accidental fentanyl poisoning, police said. Miller himself was treated for an overdose and given two doses of Narcan, and investigators wrote that he had trouble spelling the names of his other children, WNDU reported when charges were filed.

From three counts to one plea

In February 2024 the Elkhart County Prosecutor's Office charged each parent with one count of neglect of a dependent resulting in death and two counts of neglect for placing a dependent in a dangerous situation. On Sept. 18 of this year, each pleaded guilty to neglect of a dependent resulting in death, a Level 1 felony, according to WNDU and 95.3 MNC. Those reports mention only the Level 1 count and don't say what became of the two lesser ones.

Doing the arithmetic on 40

Indiana's sentencing range for a Level 1 felony like this one runs from 20 to 40 years, with an advisory sentence of 30, under Indiana Code 35-50-2-4. So 40 is the ceiling. Take away the 17 years assigned to probation and each parent is left with 23 years of prison time.

Then comes good-time credit. Inmates serving Level 1 through Level 5 felonies who aren't classified as credit-restricted are generally placed in Class B, which earns one day of credit for every three days served, under Indiana Code 35-50-6-3.1 and the Indiana courts' credit time calculator. At that rate, a 23-year prison term works out to about 17 years and three months actually behind bars, before subtracting time already spent in jail or any educational credit. That figure is the Hoosier Enquirer's own math from the statute, not a release date from the court or the Department of Correction.

What the public still hasn't been told

The reporting so far doesn't say whether the 17 years of probation were written into a plea agreement or chosen by the court. That distinction matters. If prosecutors bargained for it, voters in Elkhart County should know why. If the bench imposed it on its own, the reasoning belongs on the record where taxpayers can read it.

To be fair to the court, 40 years is well above the 30-year advisory sentence, and a long probation tail keeps the state's eyes on both parents for years after they walk out. Still, a family home where three children were exposed to fentanyl, and one of them died, is exactly the kind of case where Hoosiers expect every year of a sentence to mean what it says. It also took two years and nine months to get from the boy's death to a sentence.

Forty was the number announced in Goshen on Thursday. Twenty-three is what the prison sentence actually holds them to, and under Indiana's credit rules, the real number could be smaller still.

Written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers.