Even as her lawyer continues efforts to get her released on bail pending appeal, former Chelsea selectwoman Carole J. Swan has settled into life as a prisoner at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Conn.
Swan, 56, began serving her 87-month prison term in August.
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“She seems to be OK,” said her attorney, Darla J. Mondou, who has visited Swan at the prison. “I know that medical care in a prison is not very attentive, and I think she has some dietary issues. Apparently she’s doing as good as possible.”
Swan last week declined a reporter’s request, sent through her attorney, to be interviewed at the prison. Mondou said she is in contact with her client via email.
In filings in U.S. District Court prior to Swan’s sentencing, her lawyer at the time, Leonard Sharon, said Swan has “a number of serious medical issues” including requiring a special diet because of gastric bypass surgery, previous radiation treatments for cancer on her forehead and concerns that the prison system does not permit the medications she takes for shoulder pain, stemming from a 1994 injury while working as a rural mail carrier.
Sharon also wrote that Swan suffered from “severe depression and active symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.” Swan testified that she suffered years of abuse at the hands of her husband, Marshall Swan.
Marshall Swan was arrested in 2006 on a charge of domestic violence against his wife. The charge was dismissed later after he successfully completed a 12-month period of deferred disposition.
Mondou said Carole Swan is in what used to be the federal prison camp section at the formerly all-male prison.
“She made it to a decent facility that appears to be clean,” Swan said. “It has some good points if you have to be in prison.”
Carole Swan was convicted Sept. 17, 2013, on three counts of extortion for using her position as a selectwoman to seek kickbacks from Frank Monroe, who held the contract to plow and sand Chelsea’s roads. Swan was convicted July 27, 2013, on two counts of workers’ compensation fraud and five counts of income tax fraud. She was sentenced on June 13 of this year. Her release date is Dec. 6, 2020, according to the Federal Inmate Locator website.
Swan asked U.S. District Court Chief Judge John A. Woodcock Jr. to allow her to remain free pending her appeal of her convictions and her sentence at the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The judge refused, ruling that Swan “failed to sustain her burden to demonstrate that she intends to raise a ‘substantial question of law or fact.'”
More recently Woodcock rejected a similar motion by Mondou. Mondou said Swan’s constitutional rights were violated in that interview, that Swan’s cellphone was improperly searched by Sgt. Ryan Reardon at that time.
Mondou has asked for reconsideration of the court’s finding that Swan’s cellphone was not searched and filed more documents on behalf of her client, including a recently made transcript of a Feb. 3, 2011, videotaped interview of Swan by two deputies shortly after they stopped her vehicle on Chapel Street in Augusta and demanded the return of a sting package she had received from Monroe just moments before. Mondou said the more recent transcript was enhanced to make more of the audio recognizable.
The transcript was made by Brown & Myers of Scarborough, and Mondou’s office was billed $588.50. Mondou is retained by Swan to represent her in the appeal. Mondou was admitted to the Maine Bar in 1993, and she currently practices law — mostly in the form of federal criminal appeal work — from her home office in Marana, Ariz.
Portions of the interview, which took place at the sheriff’s office, were played in court.
“The Brown & Meyers transcript clearly supports the claim that Reardon did search the call logs on Ms. Swan’s cell phone. Reardon responds to (Deputy David) Bucknam’s statement that ‘all the calls she’s made, it’s all going to be on there’ with ‘Yeah. Yeah, it is.’ He was directly looking at the call logs at that time when he said, ‘Yeah it is.'”
Mondou also told the court where in the interview Reardon made a statement “that Ms. Swan should consider the interview as a confession.”
The prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Clark, objects to any reconsideration. “The court warned the jury that the recording was the evidence, not the transcript, and that if they differed the jury was to rely on the recording,” he wrote in his opposition.
He added, “The bottom line remains the same. The defendant was not in custody during the interview and her motion to suppress was properly denied. In addition, she has not identified any evidence seized from her cell phone and admitted into evidence at trial.”
Betty Adams — 621-56
Twitter: @betadams
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