First-time offender's 12-year sentence reduced by four years
BY GINNIE GRAHAM World Staff Writer
Monday, October 03, 2011
A Kingfisher County judge took four years off a 12-year prison sentence for a first-time offender who sold $31 worth of marijuana to an informant.
In an order issued Friday, Associate District Judge Robert Davis decided to modify the sentence of Patricia M. Spottedcrow, stating she has accomplished more in prison than in the community.
Spottedcrow, 26, received the sentence last October after selling the marijuana to a police informant in December 2009 and January 2010. Her mother, Delita Starr, 51, was also charged.
Their stories were publicized in a Tulsa World series earlier this year about Oklahoma’s high female incarceration rate.
In blind guilty pleas before a judge, Spottedcrow received prison time and her mother received 30-year suspended sentence. Neither had prior criminal convictions.
Oklahoma City attorney Josh Welch, who represents Spottedcrow, said the punishment does not fit the crime.
“We are pleased Judge Davis recognized her sentence needed to be modified, but we are simply not pleased with the amount of time that was modified,” Welch said. “I don’t walk away from this feeling good even with four years knocked down, and I’m not going to give up until she is released.”
Read more in Tuesday's Tulsa World.
Associated Images:
Patricia Spottedcrow waits inside Dr. Eddie Warrior Correctional Center in Taft on the first day of her incarceration at the facility in December. A judge on Monday reduced her 12-year sentence to eight years for selling marijuana. She was a first-time offender. ADAM WISNESKI/Tulsa World file
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