AUGUSTA — A Winslow woman has been sentenced to 20 months in prison for bringing pills, allegedly hidden in a condom in her body, into the Kennebec County jail.
Kelli A. Johnson, 35, pleaded guilty to trafficking in prison contraband Tuesday and as part of a plea deal was sentenced to 20 months in prison.
Assistant District Attorney Christopher Coleman said a Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office detective investigating the incident saw video footage from the jail that he said showed Johnson, on Jan. 14, walking into the bathroom at the jail and shutting the door behind her, but the door didn’t latch and slowly opened back up. He said the video showed Johnson reaching down her pants and pulling something out.
Another inmate told the detective she had found a condom in the bathroom of the jail unit, which exclusively houses women in the Criminogenic Addiction and Recovery Academy program, one aimed at helping people break the cycle of rearrest by dealing with their substance abuse and criminal thinking.
Coleman said jail officials considered the condom as “indicative that somebody was body-packing drugs.”
Johnson later admitted, according to an affidavit filed in court, bringing two Subutex pills, a drug used to treat opiate addiction, into the jail, which she said she gave to another inmate, Jennifer Piper.
Johnson and Piper were issued summonses on charges of trafficking in prison contraband, a class C felony punishable by up to five years.
Piper, 31, of Gardiner, did not enter a plea in her initial court appearance in March. She is scheduled to be in court June 4 for a dispositional conference on the charge against her.
Both women were in jail after being arrested on drug charges.
They both had reported to jail the previous day, Jan. 13, and other inmates told authorities the two seemed close.
Johnson, Coleman said, also violated the terms of a deferred disposition agreement she had made, in which she could have been charged with a lesser crime had she stayed out of trouble for a defined period of time, so that agreement was revoked. She also was kicked out of the CARA program.
She will be on probation for two years after her prison time.
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