The prosecutor in the murder trial of a man charged with killing a Massachusetts police officer and an innocent bystander nearly five years ago told jurors in opening statements that the suspect acted with deliberation when he used the officer’s own gun to shoot him multiple times. The defense, however, on Thursday described a defendant who has spent years struggling with mental illness made worse by frequent marijuana use. Emanuel Lopes faces 11 charges in all, including two counts of murder, in connection with the killings of Weymouth police Sgt. Michael Chesna, a veteran and married father of two, and bystander Vera Adams, a 77-year-old widow, on July 15, 2018.

A growing number of states are decriminalizing fentanyl testing strips, seeking to protect people who use drugs from unwitting exposure to the highly potent synthetic opioid ravaging the U.S. with overdose deaths. The strips have the support of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a way to help prevent fentanyl overdoses. But the strips are still technically illegal in some states under drug paraphernalia laws dating back decades. Now at least 20 states, including Ohio, Mississippi and Pennsylvania just this year, have legalized the test strips in a bid to combat rising deaths from the ever-present opioid crisis.