Back to the April 2005 Newsletter Index

Price's Sentence May Be Reduced

A young mother, for whose early release from prison Defend Life has campaigned, got a tentative promise at a hearing in Hagerstown February 18 that her sentence will be reduced.

A January 12 picket in Annapolis by Defend Life had drawn press and public attention to the plight of Becky Price, who was pregnant and serving a five-year sentence at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup.

Defend Life maintained that the sentence was unduly severe in relation to Price’s crime, and harsh on her and her baby, Hannah Elizabeth, who was taken from Becky immediately after the incarcerated woman gave birth January 19.

After hearing testimony and arguments at the modification of sentence hearing in Washington County Circuit Court, Judge Donald Beachley said, “I believe a fair, proportionate sentence is 9 to 18 months.”

Beachley said he would consider releasing her “somewhere within those 9 to 18 months” if she has not already been released by the parole board.

Price’s supporters and family members, who had packed the courtroom, had hoped not only for a reduction in sentence, but that Becky might serve the balance of it in home detention so she could be with her baby.

“The judge said he will hold the case sub curia; that means he has decided not to decide today – he will think about it,” Becky’s attorney, Martin Palmer, explained after the hearing to a small group of her family and friends, who were clearly disappointed at the hearing’s outcome.

Price, convicted by Judge Beachley in July on five counts of felony theft, began serving her sentence September 8.

“She has already served 5 ½  months, so if the earliest he [Judge Beachley] would release her is 9 months, she may be out in 3 ½ months,” Palmer pointed out.

At the hearing, Dr. James Egan, former chief of psychiatry at Children’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., testified on the importance of mother-child bonding in the first year of a child’s life.

“I’m not primarily concerned about the welfare of Ms. Price; my focus is on the best interests of the child,” Dr. Egan told the court.

Egan cited studies showing that anti-social behavior is caused by a failure to form an adequate mother-child bond in infancy.

He called the weekly, two-hour supervised “baby-bonding visits” program in which Becky and her baby participate in prison “a travesty – it accomplishes nothing for the child.

“I think the window [for bonding] is open, but it is closing quickly,” he added.

He recommended that if the state does not provide programs in which the mother can care for her child while in prison, she should be released to serve her sentence in home detention.

Hannah is being cared for by Price’s mother, Jean Calimer, a situation Egan called “the second-best alternative – but it’s second-best.”

Price’s attorney said that Becky’s actions as manager of a travel agency that resulted in her conviction for stealing more than $23,000 from some clients were because “She felt she had to make this business work, because she had failed her family.”

Price had undergone extensive counseling after two suicide attempts, the consequence of sexual abuse perpetrated by a trusted family friend when she was 9 to 12 years old, said Palmer.

The attorney said that the owner of CW Travel, Inc., Michael Pishvaian, left the inexperienced Price to manage the business by herself, dismissing the agency’s accountant and writing checks on the travel agency for other businesses he owned.

“He was sued civilly, but he was not the one who signed the checks, so he walked away scot-free,” Palmer charged.

Price worked for the travel agency from 1999 to early 2000, when Pishvaian closed the business.

In February 2000 the Maryland Attorney General’s Office joined Hagerstown police in investigating a flood of complaints concerning money paid for hundreds of vacation trips that never materialized.

“If there was no evidence of theft, why wasn’t the case appealed?” Judge Beachley commented.  “I would proffer that the evidence [against Price] was overwhelming.”

Price, wearing a gray Department of Corrections uniform and speaking in a shaking voice, told the judge, “This last five months has been the hardest time of my life.”

She said that she has asked those she harmed for forgiveness and concluded, “I’m asking you for mercy.”

Beachley responded that it would be inappropriate for courts to grant more lenient sentences to pregnant women.

“Such a policy would motivate female defendants to conceive for the wrong reasons,” he said.

The judge also wondered aloud “why this case received so much attention.  Wealth, race and gender are not relevant factors in sentencing,” he contended.

He added, however, that questioning a judge’s sentencing is “perfectly proper,” and noted that the federal sentencing guidelines for the same crime recommend 10 to 16 months without parole.