FBI group opposes release of woman who killed agent
The U. S. attorney’s office and a national FBI group said they oppose the early release of a woman who killed a Pittsburgh agent in 2008.
Christina Korbe shot Agent Sam Hicks during a drug raid and was sentenced to 15 years and 10 months. But her lawyers have filed a motion for early release, partly on the grounds that she has suffered from COVID- 19.
Prosecutors said late Monday her claims are not supported by medical records, and the FBI
Agents Association said Friday that Korbe should serve her entire prison term.
“Korbe’s assertions provide no reason to reduce her sentence, and her motion must be denied,” wrote Assistant U. S. Attorney Troy Rivetti. “Among other objections, Korbe’s claim that she has contracted and recovered from COVID- 19 is contradicted by her medical records.”
Mr. Rivetti said Korbe claimed she contracted COVID- 19 in March. But in her motion, he said, she does not claim she ever
tested positive, and she doesn’t provide any medical records corroborating the symptoms she said she suffered.
In May, Mr. Rivetti said, her entire unit at prison was tested for COVID- 19, and Korbe twice tested negative.
Mr. Rivetti said her court motion does not claim she has a “sufficiently serious medical condition” that places her at risk of complications from COVID- 19.
“Her motion does not mention any such pre- existing medical condition at all, nor do her medical records suggest one,” Mr. Rivetti said. “Indeed, Korbe claims that she is healthy enough to be doing ‘ 3,000 jumping jacks per day.’”
Even if her COVID- 19 claims were true, he said, her infection and other circumstances are not “extraordinary and compelling reasons” for a reduction, as the law states they must be.
The FBI Agents Association, which represents 14,000 current and former agents, weighed in even before the U. S. attorney, sending a statement in opposition to any early release.
The group said Korbe should be required to serve her full term because it is “necessary to honor the memory of Agent Hicks and to protect all other law enforcement officers who place themselves in harm’s way to protect the public.”
The association also said this is the third time in seven years Korbe has tried to avoid serving the sentence she agreed to serve when she pleaded guilty in 2011.
“She has not demonstrated the ‘ extraordinary and compelling’ reasons that must exist to justify compassionate release,” the group said. “The Hicks family must live their lives without their loved one — a husband, father and son — forever because of Korbe, and she should not be able to use her family as an excuse to avoid responsibility for the death of Agent Hicks.”
Korbe shot Agent Hicks on Nov. 19, 2008, when she opened fire on law officers serving a search warrant on her home following an investigation of the drug- trafficking operation of her husband, Robert Korbe.
Agent Hicks was 33 and had served with the FBI for 18 months following an earlier career with the Baltimore police department. He left behind his wife and young son.
Korbe pleaded guilty in 2011 to voluntary manslaughter. She is housed at a federal prison in Connecticut and due for release May 18, 2022.
In her request for release, she said she began showing signs of COVID- 19 on March 29, five days after her roommate was quarantined. She said she was ordered to strip her roommate’s bedding and put it in the trash.
She said she contracted COVID- 19, had a headache, lost her senses of taste and smell, suffered body aches and nausea and coughed so hard she broke a rib.
In her filings, she also reiterated her often- claimed position she never intended to kill Agent Hicks but fired to protect her children before she realized it was a police raid.
She initially requested compassionate release from the warden in April, saying she has been in prison for more than 11 years and has two children and an 87- yearold mother who has suffered three strokes. She said she lost her father to cancer and her 74- year- old father- in- law is raising the children alone.
On Aug. 20, she filed a motion for a reduced sentence under the federal First Step Act, which allows courts to reduce prison terms for “extraordinary and compelling reasons.”
She said her request should be granted because of her health conditions combined with the fact she is less than a year from being eligible for release to a halfway house. She also cited the “remorse she displayed at sentencing,” which she said “has inspired her to move her own life in the only direction it could go: toward healing herself and others around her.”