Illinois man sentenced to over 13 years for causing heroin/fentanyl overdose

CEDAR RAPIDS — An Illinois man has been sentenced to over 13 years in federal prison for selling what appeared to be heroin to one of his regular buyers — but it was mixed with fentanyl and caused the person to overdose.

Rodney Eugene Lewis, 49, of Chicago Heights, Ill., pleaded guilty in February in U.S. District Court to one count of distribution of a controlled substance.

Lewis regularly distributed heroin in Cedar Rapids between February 2018 and in 2020. He sold heroin to the victim on several occasions during this time, but sold him the fentanyl mixture in February 2020, which caused the person to overdose.

When Lewis was unavailable to distribute drugs to his customers, he provided his “drug-trafficking” cellphone to his sister and co-defendant, Marsha Celes Dismukes, so that Dismukes could supply his customers instead, prosecutors said. Dismukes was convicted of distributing a controlled substance and sentenced to over three years in 2022.

Lewis previously was convicted of two offenses in Illinois — unlawful delivery of a controlled substance and conspiracy to sell, under 18, manufacture/deliver cocaine. With this Iowa district conviction, he qualified as a career criminal, which impacted the sentencing guidelines and increased his prison term.

U.S. District Chief Judge C.J. Williams sentenced Lewis to 163 months. He was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release following his prison term.

Lewis will remain in jail under the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service until he is assigned to a federal prison.

This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicole Nagin and was investigated by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Cedar Rapids police.

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