QUADRIPLEGIC INMATE'S APPEAL FOR HOUSE ARREST REJECTED BY COURT

FORT WORTH -- Quadriplegic inmate Genice Stribling will not be allowed to
leave the Federal Medical Center Carswell to serve her 17-year sentence for
drug dealing under house arrest, a federal appeals court has ruled.

In her appeal, the 50-year-old Stribling had argued that the federal judge
who sentenced her falsely assumed that the Federal Bureau of Prisons could
adequately provide for her considerable medical needs.

Her appeal included affidavits from former inmates at the Carswell prison
hospital who alleged that their health deteriorated because of negligent
care at the prison.

During her first seven months at the nation's only federal medical center
for women, nursing aides dropped Stribling twice, causing her to shatter her
right foot on one occasion and to break her left leg on the other.

"If I serve my sentence here, I'll probably end up dead," the mother of five
said in a recent interview at the prison hospital. "They don't know how to
take care of me."

But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that it could not
find a clear error in the trial judge's sentence.

"Although the adequacy of Stribling's medical care is now disputed,
Stribling fails to meet her burden of showing that the district court's
findings of fact were clearly erroneous or that the district court relied on
materially untrue information when it refused to reduce her sentence based
on her medical condition," the unsigned opinion said.

Stribling's attorney, Assistant Federal Public Defender Timothy Crooks in
Fort Worth, said he was disappointed with the court's decision.

"They are saying the information about the medical care at FMC Carswell was
not part of the trial record at the time of sentencing, so they could not
consider it," Crooks said.

Stribling had asked the appeals court to allow her to serve her sentence
under house arrest and in the care of her daughter, Tina Davis, who lives in
Mesquite.

She broke her neck in a car accident in 1970, rendering her a quadriplegic
with limited use of her right arm. She spends most of her days in bed but is
able to get around -- with help -- in a specially fitted motorized
wheelchair.

U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis of Dallas sentenced her to 17 years in
prison for her role in a crack cocaine ring that operated like a family
business. At the sentencing hearing Dec. 30, 1999, Solis said he understood
Stribling's medical condition.

But denying her request for a more lenient sentence, Solis said: "I guess,
ultimately, where I fall is that she was in this condition at the time she
was engaged in this criminal conduct, in this criminal activity. That didn't
stop her from engaging in this criminal activity, and I don't think at this
point I'm going to use it to reduce her sentence."

Stribling's appeal succeeded in one minor point. The appeals court found
that Solis gave her a longer term of supervised release than allowed by the
law. Supervised release will follow the end of her prison sentence.

The appeals court reduced the period of supervised release from five years
to three years, but it won't affect the length of her prison sentence.