Penny Spence faces a mandatory 25 years in a Florida prison because police found 49.5 pills of Endocet, the prescription generic version of the painkiller Percocet, in her car after she crashed into a tree last year.
With echoes of the Richard Paey case, because the pills belonging to her recently deceased mother weighed more than 28 grams - including the large amounts of Tylenol in them - she faces the mandatory minimum sentence for drug trafficking even though police don’t have to prove she actually sold any on. They had originally charged her with possession but then upped the charges.
She admitted carrying her mother’s pills around with her and having taken a few for a pre-existing back condition, which had been exacerbated by often having to lift her paralysed mother on her own. Spence, an aspiring nurse, had cared for her mother in her last year of life until she finally succumbed to Lou Gehrig’s disease.
She was offered a plea bargain but rejected it, preferring to fight her case in court because, as she put it, being charged with felony drug trafficking would put pay to her chances of ever being able to work as a nurse.
CBS4 News has a video on the story (via Radley Balko @ The Agitator).