Headline Consultants: Jennifer Fredrickson

LANCASTER, PA - In the two years since Jennifer Fredrickson was arrested for taking heroin into Lancaster County Prison, she has undergone a dramatic transformation.

“People who knew me then wouldn’t even recognize me now,” the 23-year-old Lancaster resident said. “I’m a completely different person.”

But that won’t stop her from going to prison next month.

The Lancaster County District Attorney’s office invoked a 2-year mandatory minimum sentence, and Fredrickson must return to jail to begin the “rehabilitation” process all over again.

Her attorney had advocated for a sentence that would have allowed her to remain free and continue her recovery from heroin addiction.

Engaged to a man whom she said is “anti-drugs,” Fredrickson is now the mother of a 7-month old girl.

Although she is frightened about returning to prison April 28, Fredrickson hopes her story will help open the public’s eyes to the downside of mandatory minimum sentences.

“I’m a strong Christian,” she said. “Maybe this is God’s plan. Maybe, I’m being sent there to help somebody.”

On Feb. 6, 2004, Fredrickson was living on the streets, shooting 12 to 14 bags of heroin a day.

She and her boyfriend at the time, who was in prison, had sold everything they owned and at one point were doing $1,600 worth of heroin a week. She worked as a waitress, and he was a roofer.

That night, Fredrickson said, she slept at a friend’s house after convincing the woman she was not on drugs.

She took five syringes from her friend, a diabetic who used the needles to inject herself with insulin.

The following morning, Fredrickson took the syringes and five bags of heroin with her to Lancaster County Prison, where she planned to visit her boyfriend.

She had no intention of giving the drugs to her boyfriend, Fredrickson said, but because she had no permanent home, she had no place to keep them.

When she arrived at the prison lobby, she took the heroin into the bathroom with the intention of shooting up two bags and keeping the rest in her purse in a visitors’ locker.

High, unfocused and acting strange, she put the prison staff on alert.

According to the criminal complaint against Fredrickson, one of the correctional officers, or COs, went into the bathroom to change a roll of toilet paper and found her in a stall preparing to shoot up.

“That CO saved my life,” Fredrickson said. “I thank God every day for sending her in there. Otherwise, I’d be dead.”

The officer’s decision to have her arrested prevented her from shooting up and put her on the path to recovery, she said.

Fredrickson spent three months in jail awaiting trial.

It was her first time behind bars, although she had one previous criminal charge — possession of a small amount of marijuana in 2001 — to which she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation.

This time it was different. After failing to post bail, Fredrickson was locked up and forced to stay clean for the first time in four years.

The boyfriend she had planned to visit was released shortly after her arrest and stayed clean for 4½ months. Fifteen days before their fifth anniversary, however, he shot one bag of what users call a “bad batch” of heroin. It killed him.

Fredrickson’s mother, Mary Fredrickson, had taken a “tough love” approach to her daughter’s drug habit, but decided after her boyfriend’s death that Jennifer had endured enough suffering in jail.

She posted the $20,000 bail, and Jennifer decided to make the most of her time while she waited for her court date.

“After I got out, I spent two weeks with my family, then walked myself into rehab,” Fredrickson said. “I completed a 28-day program. I got a certificate and had a ceremony and everything. I’ve been clean ever since.”

Over the past two years, Fredrickson said, she has begun living for the first time in her life.

Mary Fredrickson said the difference in her daughter since her arrest is “like the difference between night and day.”

“I would fight with her every day” before, Mrs. Fredrickson said. “She would steal from me. Sometimes it got physical.

“Now I can trust her to be in my house. She respects people. She doesn’t smoke. She doesn’t drink. She’s a Christian, and she lives by those rules.”

Following the birth of their daughter, Alissia, Fredrickson and her fiancé were preparing to buy a house.

Those plans were put on hold March 8, when the district attorney’s office invoked the statute that calls for a mandatory minimum 2-year prison sentence for prison contraband crimes.

Fortunately, Fredrickson qualified for State Intermediate Punishment, which occasionally is offered to nonviolent drug offenders who commit crimes motivated by their addiction.

Under the SIP alternative, Fredrickson still must serve a minimum of 7 months in prison, including at least 4 months in the prison’s therapeutic treatment unit.

Upon successful completion of that portion of the sentence, she will be released to a community-based center for two months of in-patient substance abuse treatment.

She then will be sent to a halfway house for six months of outpatient drug treatment before being released to spend the remainder of her sentence in an after-care program.

All this for someone who already is rehabilitated, Fredrickson said.

“My biggest worry is leaving my daughter,” she said. “She’s never missed her medicine a day in her life. I’ve never been away from her a day in her life.”

According to Alissia’s pediatrician, the infant has an underactive thyroid, and if she misses medication treatments, she could wind up mentally handicapped. If the treatments are administered under close supervision, chances are good Alissia will develop normally and live a full life.

Fredrickson, a stay-at-home mother, has been carefully administering her daughter’s medication.

Her attorney, Mark F. Walmer, advocated for a sentence of time served with a long probationary period, but the DA’s office wouldn’t budge on seeking the mandatory minimum.

“During the course of my representation of Jennifer Frederickson, she has shown herself to be a determined young lady who has done an admirable job of turning her life around,” Walmer said.

“Her profound love of her newborn and her genuine commitment of her life to God are two aspects of her self-reform that make the sentence imposed especially frustrating.”

In an e-mail sent to the Intelligencer Journal, Lancaster County District Attorney Donald R. Totaro defended his decision to invoke the mandatory minimum sentence in Fredrickson’s case.

“I took an oath of office affirming that I would uphold the laws of this Commonwealth,” Totaro writes. “The Pennsylvania Legislature has determined that an individual convicted of bringing contraband into the prison under these circumstances shall be subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of 2 years in prison...”

“My personal opinion on the wisdom of this legislatively enacted statute is irrelevant,” Totaro writes in the e-mail.

Totaro points out that the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association “was concerned about providing real help for those who commit crimes based upon an addiction,” and it supported the State Intermediate Punishment Act.

“The program allows nonviolent offenders such as this defendant to avoid the mandatory sentence of 2 years, while at the same time enhancing the public safety of our communities by providing an unprecedented level of treatment and offering the best chance for offenders to permanently break their addiction,” he writes.

Fredrickson said she is frustrated that Totaro refused to look at the specifics of her case.

“He keeps insisting I need to be rehabilitated,” she said. “He’s implying that I’m still using drugs, and I’m not. I’m clean. I’ve taken responsibility for my actions.

“I’m also very different from the person who committed that crime.”

Totaro said he sometimes does not invoke mandatory sentences, but those cases must meet specific criteria.

Among the circumstances are when “the defendant works for the police as a confidential informant to identify other criminal activity, or where there are evidentiary problems with a case that might result in an acquittal if the case proceeded to trial,” Totaro writes in the e-mail.

“Our office does not force any defendant to plead guilty. This defendant had every opportunity to exercise her right to trial by jury.”

Fredrickson said she did not want to risk taking her case before a jury because she would have faced a full two years behind bars if convicted.

If the district attorney is going to take judicial discretion away from judges, Fredrickson said, he needs to exercise judicial discretion when invoking mandatories.

“He says he wants to follow his oath, and I think that’s great, but why then is he willing to bend that oath for someone who’s willing to snitch on someone else or when his case is weak?” Fredrickson said.

“Those people are going to go right back out on the street and do what they were doing before.”

Fredrickson said she is puzzled by Totaro’s decision-making when it comes to invoking mandatory sentences.

“My understanding is that mandatory sentences are guidelines,” she said.

“What I don’t understand is why the DA can accept help from drug offenders and give them a break when it benefits his office, but when it comes to helping drug offenders who have truly made a change in their life, he’s not interested.”

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