Central Pa. woman, 59, who gave brother-in-law fatal dose of heroin can’t beat 14- to 30-year jail term
Updated Feb 18, 2021;
A midstate woman convicted of causing her brother-in-law’s heroin overdose death has failed to convince a state appeals court to overturn a prison sentence that could conceivably keep her behind bars for the rest of her life.
In upholding Justina Heisey’s 14- to 30-year prison term, the Superior Court judges rejected the 59-year-old Lancaster County woman’s argument that she shouldn’t have been found guilty of a drug delivery resulting in death charge. Heisey stressed that she and an accomplice warned her brother-in-law not to take so much of the “Cloud 9” heroin they bought for him in Philadelphia. Instead, he snorted two bags of the drug, four times the amount the pair recommended that he use, Heisey contended.