BANGOR, Maine — A Gorham woman was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court to three years and nine months in prison for her role in a Greater Bangor bath salts distribution ring in 2011.
April Kane, 29, formerly of Bangor and Bucksport also was sentenced to three years of supervised release.
“Since being sober I have been able to look at how I have hurt people and how what I have done has affected their lives,” an emotional Kane told U.S. District Judge John Woodcock of her drug dealing.
Kane pleaded guilty June 24 to one count of conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute and to distribute MDPV, a synthetic hallucinogen commonly called “bath salts” or “monkey dust.”
The drug is known to cause paranoia, convulsions and psychotic behavior in users.
Kane has been held without bail at the Hancock County Jail since entering her guilty plea. She was arrested Aug. 6, 2013, after she and 13 others were indicted by a federal grand jury in Bangor. Kane, the seventh defendant to be sentenced in the case, was free on bail until she pleaded guilty.
She was responsible for helping to distribute about 1,200 grams, or more than 2½ pounds of the MDPV, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joel Casey, who prosecuted the case. Casey recommended a sentence of 54 months in prison. The prosecutor also said that Kane used drugs while serving a six-month sentence on a state charge.
“Miss Kane did a terrible, terrible thing to her community,” he said. “Her efforts and who she is today needs to be weighed against those factors and her past behavior. The government believes that a sentence of 54 months is appropriate.”
Kane, according to a sentencing memorandum filed by her attorney, Caleigh Milton of Auburn, should spend three years in prison rather than the sentence recommended by the federal prosecutor. Kane has dramatically changed her lifestyle since her involvement in the conspiracy, according to the defense’s sentencing memo.
Milton told the judge that Kane was an “ordinary addict who was hanging out with drug dealers who was selling drugs to get high.” The quantity of drugs attributed to her is high because she was with others when they were distributed.
“That she was an abuser of drugs explains her conduct but it doesn’t excuse it,” Woodcock said shortly before imposing the sentence. “When a person comes before me there are two overriding questions: what a person has done in the past and what they will do in the future.”
In sentencing Kane, Woodcock noted the enormous impact bath salts has had on the Bangor community in recent years and acknowledged that Kane had made a major change in her life.
Kane faced up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million. Under the prevailing federal sentencing guidelines, Kane faced between five years and four months and six years and nine months in federal prison. That guideline range included a credit for the six months Kane spent in jail on a state charge related to the sale of bath salts in the same conspiracy on which she faced the federal conspiracy charge.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration banned three major components of the synthetic drug bath salts — including MDPV — in October 2011, designating it as a Schedule 1 drug, the most restrictive category under the Controlled Substances Act. Maine outlawed the dangerous hallucinogenic drugs in July 2011.