Woman asks for release pending sentence in kidnapping case
Charge may be dismissed for teenage son
JACKSON, Miss. — A woman convicted of kidnapping a 6-year- old relative to pressure the girl’s mother in a dispute over a piece of land and a portable storage shed in east Mississip- pi asked a judge Friday to let her out of jail pending sentencing.
Jesse Mae Brown Pollard was convicted Thursday in U. S. District Court in Jackson on all three counts — conspiracy, kidnapping and obstruction. She faces 20 years to life in prison at sentencing, set for Feb. 18.
Her attorneys filed a motion asking that she be released until her sentencing so she can take care of “personal issues” before starting her prison term.
Asst. U. S. Atty. John Dowdy said the government opposes Pollard being released and will respond to the motion.
The child was taken from East Kemper Elementary School in the Kemper County community of Scooba on April 30 and dropped off unharmed in the rain near a stranger’s mobile home the next day. By that time, authorities say they were closing in on her abductors.
The court motion said Pollard could stay with her eldest son in Porterville and they could activate a telephone line to accommodate electronic monitoring.
Pollard’s other son, Devonta Pollard, a basketball player at the University of Alabama before he was charged in the case, was among those who testified that his mother was behind the plot. He said he didn’t know his mother and other relatives were involved until after the child was taken.
Federal prosecutors recommended deferred prosecution for Devonta Pollard, meaning the charge will be dismissed if the 19-year-old stays out of trouble for two years.
Five others, most of them related to each other, Pollard and the victim, pleaded guilty Nov. 6 and await sentencing. They include a school secretary charged with telling Jesse Pollard where to find the child that day: the school library.
Investigators say the child was taken from the school to a hotel in Bessemer, Ala., then moved to a hotel in Laurel, Miss. She was dropped off near Enterprise, Miss., and told her mother was in a nearby mobile home and she should run to it.