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Woman pleads guilty to drug charge, asks to be sent to jail
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Kayla Dempsey is so desperate to break her heroin addiction she had an unusual request Wednesday when she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor drug charge in Youngstown Municipal Court: She asked to be sent to jail.
Judge Elizabeth Kobly obliged, sentencing Dempsey, 25, to 30 days in jail, at which Dempsey broke into tears. She also told Dempsey by pleading guilty to the drug-instrument possession charge, she also signs over the next two years of her life to the judge through probation, and the judge said she will be paying attention.
“You’ve got me to answer to for the next two years of your life, and I am not playing games,” Judge Kobly told her via video hookup from the jail.
Dempsey’s lawyer, Thomas Zena, said his client wanted the jail sentence because being in jail means she is free from the drug and can detox.
He told the judge she had been clean for five years but recently relapsed. City Prosecutor Dana Lantz said Dempsey had only one arrest since a 2010 felony theft conviction, in 2013 in Virginia, and Dempsey said that case was dismissed.
Dempsey told the judge she started using heroin at 18.
Judge Kobly said she could not understand how someone could kick the heroin habit and then start using the drug again, even though she acknowledged the drug has a hold on people for every day of their lives.
“I don’t understand how you let yourself get back into that situation again,” Judge Kobly said. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair to your family.”
Dempsey said she is supported by her 75-year-old grandmother.
She was arrested April 25, when an officer who was flagged down on the West Side was told by a relative of Dempsey’s that she had stolen a key that belonged to her grandmother. Police found her walking on South Schenley Avenue, and when they stopped to talk to her she admitted she had a needle, reports said.
Dempsey skipped a court appearance on the charge and was arrested on a warrant Monday in the 3500 block of Canfield Road. Zena told the judge Dempsey wanted to plead guilty so she could put the charge behind her.