SIOUX FALLS, S.D.—The U.S. Supreme Court will not hear the appeal of a woman who ran a drug ring out of a house in Pine Ridge donated to her after a 1999 visit by former President Bill Clinton.
Geraldine Blue Bird, 53, was sentenced in April 2007 to 34 years in federal prison for conspiracy to distribute cocaine, possession with intent to distribute cocaine, possession of a firearm in relation to drug trafficking and conspiracy to distribute marijuana.
She was found guilty of hosting a conspiracy that trafficked an estimated $2 million worth of cocaine from Denver to Nebraska and South Dakota over three years, according to prosecutors.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the case. The Supreme Court late last month denied Blue Bird’s petition for a writ of certiorari, which means justices won’t hear it.
Her expected release date is in 2035 and she’s currently serving time at the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, according to the Bureau of Prisons.
In July 1999, Clinton honored Blue Bird for taking in anyone who needed a meal or a place to stay, despite her own poverty.
More than two dozen adults and children lived in her four-room, dilapidated house and in a mobile home out back when Clinton’s presidential visit made her a symbol of conditions on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, one of the nation’s poorest areas.
After Clinton’s visit, donations came in from around the country, and Blue Bird got a new doublewide trailer as a result of all the attention.
The light blue house in Pine Ridge, which sat next to the smaller place Blue Bird lived in when the president visited, was seized by federal agents and sat unoccupied and boarded up until it was removed last year.
Twenty-eight people, including family members, were indicted in the investigation. Eventually, 23 pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance or related charges. Blue Bird and four others were convicted at trial and she received the longest sentence.
Blue Bird minimized her role.
“I’m being held responsible for a lot of things I wasn’t involved with,” she said at sentencing. “There are things that I’ve been accused of and convicted of that I really didn’t do.”
U.S. Attorney Marty Jackley said the evidence proved otherwise and showed that she was the ringleader of an operation run out of her home.
“The U.S. attorney’s office is pleased with the U.S. Supreme Court decision denying review in Blue Bird’s case. It makes her conviction and 34-year sentence final. Federal, tribal, local and state agencies all worked tirelessly to bring an end to Blue Bird’s cocaine conspiracy and take her off the streets,” Jackley said Monday.
