OFFICER SENTENCED IN INMATE DRUG SALES

A correctional officer who was convicted of smuggling heroin to inmates at
the Patuxent Institution was sentenced yesterday by a Howard County Circuit
Court judge to three years in prison.

Calling his crime "particularly egregious," Judge Diane Leasure gave
Frederick Leon Burchfield, 29, the maximum term under state sentencing
guidelines.

Burchfield told police that on 30 occasions, he acted as a runner for
Patuxent inmates, picking up drugs and delivering them inside the walls,
according to his attorney and Assistant State's Attorney Lara Weathersbee.

His fee usually was $50.

An April 6 incident, in which Burchfield bought drugs from an undercover
officer posing as a dealer, was the only crime with which he was charged.

Richard T. Rosenblatt, the director of Patuxent, testified that the
institution's role as a treatment facility makes the crime especially
troubling. "Inmates, virtually to a man or woman, come in with a substance
abuse problem," he said.

Burchfield had been a correctional officer for three years.

His personnel record was otherwise clean.