Patricia Spottedcrow, then 25, was arrested with her mother Delita Starr and her brother in an early-morning raid in January 2010 after selling $31 of marijuana to an undercover police informant in Kingfisher.[1] The December 2009 and January 2010 sales were her first felony arrests, and each of the three was held on $100,000 bond before entering blind guilty pleas before a judge.[1][2] Judge Susie Pritchett sentenced Spottedcrow to 12 years in prison with no probation, saying the sentence fit the crime because Spottedcrow showed no remorse, while her mother received a 30-year suspended sentence.[1][2]
Sentence cut after national outcry
Coverage of Spottedcrow’s case in a 2011 series on women in Oklahoma prisons drew supporters who pushed for reconsideration, and a sentence-modification hearing followed.[3][4] In an order issued on Friday 30 September 2011, Associate District Judge Robert Davis suspended the final four years of the sentence, leaving eight years, saying she had done better in the structure of the Department of Corrections than in her adult life in the community.[2] Her attorney Josh Welch said the punishment did not fit the crime.[2]
Spottedcrow’s sentence was later reduced to eight years with four suspended, and she was paroled in November 2012 after the state Pardon and Parole Board recommended early release and Governor Mary Fallin approved it subject to three months in a work-release program.[3][4] She was reunited with her four children after about two years inside, still owing $2,470 in fines.[3][5][4] Spottedcrow, who is part Native American and part African American, became a symbol of Oklahoma’s harsh sentencing of women for nonviolent drug offences.[5]
