Conflicting testimony has complicated the prosecution of a woman whom authorities allege supplied the drugs in what’s believed to be Leelanau County’s first-ever opiate overdose death.

As Patrick Sullivan writes in this week's Northern Express - sister publication of The Ticker - what makes the development all the more confounding is that the conflicting testimony comes from the same witness: the daughter of the accused drug dealer. While on the witness stand, the daughter has both implicated her mother and exonerated her.

The wavering dynamic was on display Oct. 16 at a preliminary examination for Angela Schocko, the 48-year-old who faces up to life in prison on a charge of delivering drugs causing death. Schocko’s daughter, 20-year-old Erin Grant, testified for the prosecution against her mother and, at one point, said her mother supplied the drugs, but at another point, said she didn’t. Grant ended her testimony by pleading the Fifth Amendment.

The drama unfolded as four generations of Schocko’s female relatives watched, seated behind her in the courtroom gallery. Another witness, a neighbor of Schocko, testified that two days after the death, Schocko asked if she could flush what he believed was evidence of the death down his toilet. In the end, District Court Judge Michael Stepka ruled there was enough evidence for Schocko to stand trial on the charges. No one said drug cases are supposed to be simple, says Joseph Hubbell, the county prosecutor.

“Any of these cases pose a challenge, particularly where people are given immunity or agree to testify for something else...these are difficult cases, but when you’re dealing with the people involved in these kinds of transactions, you’re not always dealing with the most honorable, believable people,” he says. “Just because it’s challenging doesn’t mean I should shirk away from doing my job.”

Schocko’s defense attorney, David Becker, says Grant’s conflicting testimony, and the conflicting testimony of Grant’s co-defendant and boyfriend, 22-year-old Preston Weaver, undermine the prosecution’s case against Schocko. Becker says his client is “a nobody” who investigators have built up to be some kind of drug kingpin. He says investigators pursued the case with “too much muscle” in reaction to the ugliness of an overdose death occurring in the picturesque county, and that Grant and Preston were given an incentive to lie and pin the case on Schocko when they might, in fact, have been the responsible party.

Read more about the complex case playing out in Leelanau County's court system in this week's Northern Express cover story, "A Nobody, Or A Drug Kingpin?" The Northern Express is available to read online, or pick up a free copy at one of nearly 700 spots in 14 counties across northern Michigan.