Greensboro man sentenced in first death-by-distribution fentanyl conviction

A Greensboro man who admitted giving fentanyl to his brother was sentenced to 55 to 78 months in prison, turning a family overdose into Guilford County’s first death-by-distribution conviction from a Greensboro Police Department investigation.

Matthew Glenn Porter pleaded guilty in Guilford County Superior Court, where Judge Tonya Cutchin accepted the plea agreement and imposed the sentence at Record Level I. The case centered on the September 2024 death of Jeffrey Allen Porter, Matthew Porter’s brother, after police said Matthew Porter gave him the fentanyl that caused the overdose.

Court records laid out the facts of the case before the defense and family members spoke. Police said Matthew Porter admitted at the time of his arrest that he had supplied the drug. He was charged in May 2025 and indicted on the Class C homicide count in August 2025, a timeline that shows how the investigation moved from overdose response to a homicide-level prosecution.

Jeffrey Porter was found unresponsive at home in Greensboro in September 2024, taken to the hospital and later died. The medical examiner ruled the death an overdose. Matthew Porter was 37 at the time of his arrest; Jeffrey Porter was 38.

The sentence lands in a legal landscape that changed before this death. North Carolina’s death-by-distribution law was revised by Session Law 2023-123 and took effect Dec. 1, 2023. The newer law applies to offenses committed on or after that date and broadened the offense to cover unlawful delivery and ingestion of controlled substances that proximately cause a death. Because the conduct in this case happened in September 2024, the revised statute applied.

For Guilford County prosecutors, the conviction is a marker. The district attorney’s office said it was the first death-by-distribution conviction to come out of a Greensboro Police Department investigation, signaling how law enforcement is handling fentanyl deaths when the source can be traced to a specific person rather than an anonymous supply chain.

The case also fits a broader Triad pattern. Another Guilford County death-by-distribution fentanyl case in 2025 ended with a five- to seven-year sentence, showing prosecutors have continued to use the statute in overdose deaths tied to local families and acquaintances. In this case, the tragedy stayed close to home, with one brother dead and another headed to prison after a fatal fentanyl handoff inside a Greensboro household.