A St. Mary’s woman was sentenced Friday to serve 12 years in prison from her guilty pleas to robbery charges in court papers from a pair of heists in late 2016 targeting a pizza shop and a customer at the Walmart store in California.
Courtney Marie Tippett, now 26, said her participation in the two crimes was something “which I had no right to do, using drugs or not.” She added, “I’m not going to be that person anymore.”
St. Mary’s grand jurors indicted Tippett early last year on charges including a November 2016 armed robbery at the Little Caesar’s business off Route 235 in Lexington Park, and a robbery that month of a Morganza woman at the discount department store’s address, a crime that also led to robbery, assault and conspiracy counts against Kevin Russell Bryant.
Bryant, now 26, lived with Tippett in a California neighborhood, court records state, and he was arraigned Monday on an indictment that followed initial district court papers alleging he carried out the snatching at Walmart of the Morganza woman’s wallet, along with $350 in cash and a cellphone valued at $450.
Bryant and Tippett both were dressed in state prison clothing as they made their separate appearances this month in St. Mary’s courtrooms, and online court records state they each were sentenced last spring in Anne Arundel County to serve four years in prison from their guilty pleas to an armed robbery that occurred, and resulted in their arrest, the day after the back-to-back robberies in California.
“Ms. Tippett had a petty criminal record until three days at the end of [2016] when she went on a crime spree,” St. Mary’s Assistant State’s Attorney Daniel White said Friday at the woman’s sentencing hearing. “She had an awful bad weekend.”
The prosecutor noted that while most offenders focus on excuses for their conduct during their presentence investigation, Tippett wrote that she was “worried about the person I took things from at Christmastime.”
Public defender Amber Mackanin, Tippett’s lawyer, concurred that her client’s viewpoint on the “turmoil she has caused … is something that is unique to her,” and that Tippett has spent her time in custody advocating rehabilitative programs for female inmates.
St. Mary’s Circuit Judge Karen H. Abrams said that the 12-year cap on Tippett’s sentence in her plea agreement was “very generous,” and lower than a 17- to 30-year guidelines range which reflected her previous lesser offenses.
Previously, “It’s just slaps on the wrist, over and over again,” the judge said. “And you keep doing it.”
The judge did agree to recommend that Tippett serve her sentence at a rehabiliative prison facilty, to be followed by drug treatment during five years of supervised probation.
“You do impress me,” Abrams said.
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