by peter e. bortner
A Gordon woman must remain behind state prison bars for selling heroin, a three-judge state Superior Court panel has decided.
In a four-page opinion filed Wednesday in Pottsville, the panel ruled Francine Gerrity, 45, offered no reason to disturb her conviction or sentence stemming from the September 2010 drug deal.
As a result, Gerrity will spend two to five years in a state correctional institution, the prison term imposed on March 21, 2012, by President Judge William E. Baldwin as part of his sentence. Gerrity is serving that sentence, under the terms of which she also must pay costs, $100 to the Substance Abuse Education Fund and $113 restitution to the state police crime laboratory in Bethlehem and submit a DNA sample to law enforcement authorities, at SCI/Muncy in Lycoming County.
A Schuylkill County jury convicted Gerrity on Feb. 6, 2012, of delivery of a controlled substance, possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Schuylkill County detectives charged Gerrity with selling two packets of heroin for $40 to an undercover police officer on Sept. 8, 2010, in Mahanoy Township.
In the panel's opinion, Judge Paula Francisco Ott rejected Gerrity's claim that the verdict was against the weight of the evidence because the prosecution witnesses were too inconsistent in their testimony.
She ruled that such a challenge concedes that enough evidence exists to support the conviction. Furthermore, Ott wrote, an appellate court cannot reassess the credibility of witnesses it has not see or heard.
Judge Sallie Updyke Mundy and Senior Judge Eugene B, Strassburger III, the other panel members, concurred with Ott's opinion.
