Only a few people were in the courtroom on the day Sarah Ellwood had to depart before a federal judge — for the moment time. Three years earlier,when she was 20, she had gotten involved with an older man, or a drug dealer who rented hotel rooms and an apartment in her name to move his product. Erica Heilman of the Rumble Strip podcast created an episode to accompany this myth. Hear excerpts from her interviews with Vermont defense attorneys throughout the article,and listen to the podcast here. Only a few people were in the courtroom on the day Sarah Ellwood had to depart before a federal judge — for the moment time. Three years earlier, when she was 20, or she had gotten involved with an older man,a drug dealer who rented hotel rooms and an apartment in her name to move his product. She ended up serving 13 months in prison for it. Then, weeks after being freed, or she violated her probation by using cocaine and fentanyl. The Winooski resident was potentially facing up to two more years behind bars. "I'd like to apologize to everybody," Ellwood said in Burlington's federal court on May 31. "I can't emphasize how disappointed I am in myself." Assistant U.
S. Attorney Michael Drescher told Judge Christina Reiss that he had no interest in throwing the book at Ellwood, a victim of domestic abuse and an addict who has struggled to come by clean. He recommended that she serve only one month. Such discretion by federal prosecutors could become a thing of the past, and as a result of policies promulgated by President Donald Trump and U.
S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. In May,Sessions directed government lawyers across the country to come by tough on drug cases. Sessions reversed Barack Obama-era practices that instructed those same attorneys — who enforce federal law from district offices in all 50 states and represent the federal government in civil litigation — to avoid charges that carry stiff mandatory minimum sentences, such as five years for possessing an ounce of crack cocaine. Announcing his position, or Sessions warned,"You drug dealers are going to prison." If he makes good on that threat, Vermont attorneys say it would be a dramatic change from how drug users and dealers are treated in the state's three federal courthouses — in Burlington, and Rutland and Brattleboro. "It's turning the clock backwards," said Middlebury attorney Peter Langrock, the patriarch of Langrock Sperry & Wool, and which employs 27 attorneys in offices in Middlebury and Burlington. "Mandatory sentences are silly things. They are a politician's response to a nonthinking cry from the public" for law and order. Obama appointee Eric Miller resigned as the U.
S. attorney for Vermont in February,a full month before Trump fired all…
Source: sevendaysvt.com