Inmate gets extra prison time for smuggling drugs
An inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in Texarkana was sentenced to 24 additional months in prison Tuesday for attempting to smuggle a drug used to treat opioid addiction into the prison.
Chester “Baldy” Brown, 42, appeared with Texarkana lawyer Howard Mowery for sentencing Monday before U.S. District Judge Robert Schroeder III in Texarkana’s downtown federal building. Brown was in FCI serving a sentence of more than 20 years for distributing large quantities of crack cocaine and powder cocaine in the Dallas area, federal court records show. Brown was sentenced Aug. 22, 2016, to 262 months in prison as part of a plea agreement in the Dallas Division of the Northern District of Texas.
Brown was indicted by a federal grand jury in the Texarkana Division of the Eastern District of Texas last year. According to a factual basis filed in Brown’s most recent case, prison officials learned that Brown was receiving the drug buprenorphine in the mail.
Buprenorphine is a drug used to help individuals abusing an opioid, such as heroin or the prescription drug oxycodone, when they are attempting to rid themselves of addiction and avoid the symptoms of withdrawal. Suboxone is a drug which is largely buprenorphine but contains naloxone, as well. If injected, the naloxone negates the effects of the opiate buprenorphine, thus making it less likely to be abused by intravenous drug users.
If used orally, either in pill or in the form of a film that is dissolved beneath the tongue, Suboxone can give the user a high, particularly if that person does not suffer from an opioid addiction. According to articles published in the New York Times and other media, Suboxone is increasingly being smuggled into jails and prisons.
According to Brown’s factual basis in Texarkana, he received mail with strips of Suboxone, the type that is used sublingually, hidden beneath postage stamps. Correctional officers who had been monitoring Brown’s phone calls determined that a relative of Brown’s planned to send him a controlled substance in the mail.
Two letters addressed to Brown were intercepted in the Texarkana FCI mailroom on March 29, 2017. Each of the letters were mailed with two stamps and beneath each stamp were two strips of Suboxone for a total of eight Suboxone film strips. Testing by the Drug Enforcement Agency revealed that the strips were Suboxone containing buprenorphine.
Brown must serve the 24-month sentence he received for possessing contraband in prison consecutively to the time he was already serving for drug distribution.