Published: August 31, 2009 09:34 pm      

Ill drug dealer asks for release

Attorney’s attempt postponed until prisoner transported to court.

A judge has postponed consideration of a request to release a cocaine dealer from prison because of a cancer diagnosis so the inmate can appear in court.

In Cass Superior Court II on Monday, Jay Hirschauer, the attorney for 59-year-old James Cripe, asked Judge Rick Maughmer to release his client from the Miami Correctional Facility because Cripe has been diagnosed with cancer in his mouth and throat since receiving a six-year prison term last year.

The cancer required surgery, which took place in an Indianapolis hospital in July. Hirschauer said Cripe’s recovery in prison had been difficult. He wanted the judge to modify Cripe’s sentence and release him onto in-home detention so the decorated Vietnam War veteran could receive proper treatment by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Hirschauer said his client used alcohol and cocaine to deal with the psychological problems of war. He called the motion a “humanitarian request.”

Cass County Prosecutor Kevin Enyeart referenced his disgust with the recent prison release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of killing 270 people in the 1988 airline bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Last week, Megrahi was returned to his home country to die of prostate cancer.

Enyeart acknowledged that Cripe’s crime of dealing cocaine is serious but he said it was nowhere near as heinous as the act committed by Megrahi.

Cripe was arrested on July 27, 2006, during Bought & Paid For, a series of drug raids that led to the arrests of 41 suspects in a single day. He was charged with two class A felony counts of dealing in cocaine, which each carrying a sentencing range of 20 to 50 years in prison, but he pleaded guilty in exchange for a reduction in the possible penalties.

In October, Maughmer sentenced Cripe to six years in the Indiana Department of Correction and four years on probation.

Before agreeing to a sentence modification, Enyeart wanted to hear from Cripe, not just his two daughters, who testified that their father was not eating properly and losing weight. They fear the cancer will come back, and he will die in prison. The daughters offered to help care for their father and pay the $13 a day for in-home detention.

Maughmer did not have Cripe transported from the prison in Bunker Hill for Monday’s hearing, but agreed he would sign the transport order for a hearing at 2 p.m. on Oct. 26.

• Kevin Lilly is news editor of the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached at (574) 732-5117 or kevin.lilly@pharostribune.com