CHEYENNE, Wyo.—A West Virginia man who conspired to distribute the cocaine and methadone that caused his wife’s 2008 fatal overdose at a Wyoming hotel was sentenced on Tuesday to 10 years in prison.
Gregory Alan Baisi, 40 of Philippi, W.Va., pleaded guilty in October.
His wife, Stacy Hudkins-Baisi, died from a drug overdose in April 2008 after medical teams found the 35-year-old unconscious at the Hitching Post Inn in Cheyenne.
U.S. District Judge Alan B. Johnson also sentenced Nicholas Robert Odom, 25, of Johnstown, Colo., in the case. Odom received just over eight years in prison on his conviction of distribution of methadone resulting in Hudkins-Baisi’s death.
Two other men were sentenced in the case last year.
U.S. District Judge William F. Downes of Casper last April sentenced Dallas T. Bennett of Longmont, Colo., and Matthew C. Lee, of Monticello, Ga., to serve 20 years each for conspiracy to distribute cocaine and methadone resulting in Hudkins-Baisi’s death.
Tuesday’s sentencings close the case, assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Murray said.
Murray said Gregory Baisi, his wife and Lee all had been staying at the Hitching Post Inn in early 2008 while the two men worked as electricians on a construction project in Cheyenne.
Lee was originally charged in state court with attempted delivery of cocaine. Murray said Lee’s case was transferred to federal court because federal law provides for a stiffer penalty when illegal distribution of drugs results in death.
According to a detective’s statement filed in state court, Gregory Baisi told police that Lee had been supplying him and his wife with cocaine for about a month before she died.
On the night his wife died, Baisi said Lee awoke him to inform him that his wife was unresponsive. Lee then fled the hotel room before first responders arrived on the scene. Hudkins-Baisi was later pronounced dead at a Cheyenne hospital.
Murray told Johnson on Tuesday that Bennett and Odom brought the methadone pills to Cheyenne. Murray said Gregory Baisi paid for the pills for his wife to use, but wasn’t present when she got them.
Sean Barrett, lawyer for Baisi, told Johnson that his client got the pills in a misguided attempt to help his wife deal with a pain condition. Barrett said people had come together to use drugs for recreation that night with no intention that the woman would die.
“I would give anything to have this not happen,” Baisi told the judge. He said he failed in his responsibility to protect his wife, even from herself.
A 2008 obituary notice for Hudkins-Baisi from a funeral home in West Virginia stated that she was survived by a son, a daughter and many other relatives.
In sentencing Odom, Johnson noted that, in common with other fatal drug cases he’s handled, the defendants in Hudkins-Baisi’s death didn’t intend to kill anyone.
“The fact of the matter is we have amateurs out there playing with dangerous, controlled substances,” Johnson said.
