BOSTON – Two former corrections officers at the Essex County Correctional Facility were sentenced recently in U.S. District Court in Boston for their involvement with smuggling Suboxone into the Essex County House of Corrections – Middleton for inmates.
Katherine Sullivan, 32, of Londonderry, N.H., was sentenced yesterday by U.S. District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs to 36 months of probation, 120 hours of community service, and ordered to pay a fine of $5,000. In November 2016, Sullivan pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring with inmates to distribute Suboxone, a drug used to treat opioid addiction, between October and December 2015.
In January 2017, U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns sentenced John S. Weir, 34, of Danvers, Mass., to the same sentence after Weir pleaded guilty to conspiring with inmates to distribute Suboxone between September and November 2014. Both Sullivan and Weir have resigned from their positions as corrections officers.
The investigations revealed that Weir and Sullivan obtained Suboxone strips from sources outside the jail and smuggled the contraband into the facility when reporting for their shifts. Inmates receiving the Suboxone from Weir and Sullivan then sold the drug to other prisoners inside the correctional facility.
Essex County Sheriff Kevin F. Coppinger said, “We have a zero tolerance policy for this type of behavior and we will take swift and decisive action in all cases.”
Acting United States Attorney William D. Weinreb; Harold H. Shaw, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division; and Essex County Sheriff Coppinger, made the announcement. Assistant U.S. Attorney William F. Bloomer of Weinreb’s Public Corruption and Special Prosecutions Unit prosecuted the cases.