In a request to U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs, former Therapeutics Inc. sales manager Sunrise Lee, 40, requested a two-month delay for reporting to a federal prison in Kentucky to care for her son.
"Parenting during a pandemic requires more structure, greater supervision and increased interaction to replace the school and social structures that are not available," Lee told the court. "This requires in person and in-home parenting, not prison parenting."
Lee was convicted after a blockbuster three-month trial in early 2019 for her role in an opioid kickback and fraud scheme. She was sentenced to a year and a day in prison.
The motion to put off going to jail is her seventh such request since she was sentenced in January 2020, and she is expected to report to prison in early March 2020.
Ruling on the previous request for a delay, Judge Burroughs said it would have been a hard "no" if the call was being made "under any other circumstances."
"These motions would be denied," the judge said. "Although the court fully understands the government's position and its interest in having defendants serve their sentences in a timely manner, the court must balance this interest against the need to keep prison populations low enough such that the facilities can safely house those who must be there."
In her latest filing, Lee said that her asthma leaves her at risk of severe sickness if she were to contract the virus. Federal Medical Center Lexington, where she is expected to report, is the "most infected federal Bureau of Prisons facility in the country," she wrote.
Since Jan. 8, Lee's former colleagues and co-defendants John Kapoor, Michael J. Gurry, Richard M. Simon, Joseph A. Rowan and Michael L. Babich have all filed motions requesting similar delays.
In his request to the court, former Insys CEO Babich said, "We ask simply that his self-surrender not coincide with the worst outbreak of this pandemic, in one of the virus hotspots in the country, and be timed as reasonably as possible to mitigate this once-in-a-generation health risk."
Last week, Insys founder Kapoor asked to put off the start of his 66-month prison term until he gets a COVID-19 vaccine.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's office declined to comment. Representatives for Lee were not immediately available for comment on Friday.
The government is represented by K. Nathaniel Yeager of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts.
Lee is represented by Peter Charles Horstmann.
The case is U.S. v. Babich et al., case number 16-cr-10343, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
--Additional reporting by Chris Villani. Editing by Adam LoBelia.
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