Man Pleads Guilty to Selling LSD to Undercover Agents

A USC student pleaded guilty Monday in Los Angeles federal court to selling 11,200 doses of LSD to undercover narcotics agents.

Hugh “Scottie” McLetchie, 21, the grandson of a federal appeals court judge, faces a minimum of 10 years in prison and a maximum of 90 years for drug trafficking and conspiracy. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 10.

Federal authorities previously had implicated McLetchie in the deaths of five youths whose car crashed on their way home from an all-night rave party in the Angeles National Forest. Agents said McLetchie bragged in their presence about selling drugs to the teens.

Traces of the drug Ecstasy and methamphetamine were found in the youths’ systems, but no LSD was discovered. McLetchie has not been charged in their deaths.

In court Monday, McLetchie appeared youthful but somber, wearing a prison-issue green jacket and blue pants, his blond hair cut short. Present in the courtroom were McLetchie’s father, a physician, his mother, a professor at Boston College, and his sister, a law student at UCLA.

McLetchie’s grandfather, a judge on the federal 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, did not attend the plea hearing.

Defense attorney John E. Meyers said his client was “pretty well destroyed” by the drug conviction and explained that the college student “just got wrapped up in the drug scene here when he came to [USC].”

Meyers said this was McLetchie’s first criminal conviction, and he hoped U.S. District Judge Nora M. Manella would exempt McLetchie from the 10-year mandatory sentence under a statutory “safety valve” provision. It allows judges to impose more lenient prison terms for first-time offenders.

Prosecutors previously said McLetchie faced only a five-year mandatory sentence. But Assistant U.S. Atty. Christopher Johnson said at Monday’s hearing that he had not realized a U.S. Supreme Court ruling requires that the weighing of the LSD must include whatever it was on--such as paper or sugar cubes--to determine the seller’s penalty. Including the blotter paper’s weight doubled McLetchie’s potential sentence, he said.

After the hearing, Johnson said an investigation was ongoing into the source of McLetchie’s LSD. He would not comment on whether McLetchie was cooperating in that.

Meanwhile, federal authorities are continuing to prosecute Rita Wadhwani, McLetchie’s former roommate and alleged co-conspirator. Wadhwani is also a USC student.