A Canadian man accused of selling a legal but potentially deadly chemical and other items online to dozens of people who took their own lives pleaded guilty on Friday to aiding suicide, ending the prospect of a murder trial after prosecutors said a recent appellate ruling made murder charges untenable.

Kenneth Law, 60, appeared at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Newmarket, Ontario, north of Toronto. Wearing tan pants, a white shirt and dark suit jacket, Law showed no emotion as he stood in a prisoner’s box and pleaded guilty to aiding the suicides of 14 Ontario residents, aged 16 to 36. He will be sentenced in September.

Law also admitted that 79 people in Britain died as a result of consuming or using products he sold, according to an agreed statement of facts spanning more than 60 pages, which was expected to take around three hours to read out in court.

Prosecutor Peter Westgate told Justice Michelle Fuerst that prosecutors would ask that 14 first-degree murder charges Law was also facing be withdrawn after his sentencing.

Family members of victims inside the courtroom were visibly upset, with some wiping their eyes with tissues, as prosecutor Cheryl Nadler read out the circumstances of each victim’s death.

Salt Can Be Deadly in High Concentrations

According to the statement, Law operated four companies with websites through which he marketed and sold sodium nitrite and other items, including masks, hoods and regulators, that ​could be used by the purchasers to take their own lives.

Sodium nitrite, a salt used in low concentrations as a food additive to cure processed meats, can be deadly when ingested in high concentrations.

Law sent 1,209 packages of the salt and other goods to customers in 41 countries between January 2021 and April 2023, the court heard. The shipments included 330 sent to addresses in Britain, 431 to the United States and 157 within Canada.

The statement described victims who vomited, collapsed in their parents’ arms, were found unresponsive in bed by family members or friends, or who died alone in hotel rooms and vehicles after consuming or using products shipped by Law.

Financial records showed more than $296,000 CAD was deposited into Law’s bank account from Shopify and PayPal accounts associated with his businesses between 2020 and 2023, according to the statement of facts.

Law’s case has drawn global attention because of its international reach. Authorities in Britain, Ireland and other countries have opened investigations into whether the products were responsible for deaths in their jurisdictions and conducted welfare checks on those who purchased them.

Murder Prosecution ‘Impossible,’ Prosecutor Says

Westgate told the court that prosecuting Law for murder was no longer viable after a 2024 Ontario Court of Appeal ruling in an unrelated case involving a nurse who injected herself, her mother and her young daughter with potentially lethal doses of insulin.

In that case, the appellate court “described the standard of causation that applies in a situation like we have here, where a victim performs the final acts leading to death,” Westgate said.

Prosecutors asked the Supreme Court of Canada to overturn that standard, Westgate said, but the majority did not rule on the issue, leaving the appellate decision as binding authority in Ontario.

“This decision makes a murder prosecution in this case impossible,” Westgate said.

Law, a trained engineer who worked as a cook before his arrest, has been in custody since his arrest at his home west of Toronto in May 2023.

A conviction for counseling or aiding suicide carries a ​prison sentence of up to 14 years, according to ​Canada’s Criminal Code. First-degree murder in Canada carries a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment with no chance of parole for ​a minimum of 25 years.

(Reporting by Ryan Patrick Jones in Toronto; Editing by Edmund Klamann, David Holmes and Nick Zieminski)