Judge adds just 2 years to Sprouse sentence

Surprised by Wendy Sprouse’s embezzlement sentence of more than 22 years, a Shenandoah County judge on Wednesday added just two more years to her time for violating probation on prior convictions.

Judge Dennis L. Hupp could have imposed 15 suspended years, and ordinarily would have for a severe probation violation, he told Sprouse and attorneys.

“However, I’m not a robot ... we have to take into consideration other conditions,” he said, adding that he acted under the assumption Sprouse’s Waynesboro sentence of 22-and-a-half years would not be modified by pending appeals.

In November, Waynesboro jurors found Sprouse guilty of three counts of embezzlement for stealing more than $16,000 from a city real estate agent. The jury’s recommendation of 22 years and six months in prison was the stiffest embezzlement sentence in city history, according to the Waynesboro prosecutor’s office. It rattled relatives and the employer who turned her in to police.

The convictions triggered probation violation hearings for Sprouse’s two prior embezzlement convictions in Rockingham County. Those cases left Sprouse on probation with court orders to stay out of trouble, pay restitution of more than $30,000 and inform all future employers of her criminal history.

She failed at all three, argued Chris Miller, deputy commonwealth’s attorney in Rockingham County.

“She has simply made a choice to repeatedly violate the law,” Miller said. “Each time, she was given a chance to reform herself ... She understood what the deal was.”

A probation officer testified that Sprouse failed to make restitution payments, never told Rockingham authorities when she was charged in Waynesboro and failed to tell employers of her criminal past.

Then the judge read her Waynesboro sentencing order.

“She got 22-and-a-half years?”

“Yes, sir,” Miller and defense attorney John S. Hart, Jr answered in unison.

The judge raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

“The jury … it’s quite clear … were outraged: outraged at her behavior,” Miller said.

Hart asked the judge to consider what guidelines called for — less than three years in prison — and showed documents that full restitution was paid in that case.

“Your honor, there was a time for mercy in this case … then there also is a time for reckoning,” Miller said.

Judge Hupp briefly was silent. Sprouse’s husband Darrell put his face into his hands.

Then Wendy Sprouse, wearing an orange and white jail uniform, and her hair increasingly brown as blond dye grows out, stood and read an apology.

“Every day I wake up knowing my kids are without their mother and my husband is without his wife,” she said, crying.

Hupp told Sprouse the appeals court would be unlikely to modify her sentence, then imposed two additional years in prison.

“He could have been much worse,” Darrell Sprouse said, adding that the prosecutor: “tried to make her out like a bad person. But she’s not.”

Wendy Sprouse is being held at the Rockingham Regional Jail in Harrisonburg.

Her defense attorney in the Waynesboro case, David Hargett, argued for a sentence-reduction hearing, but was denied. His argument in part included interviews with jurors described as regretful and unhappy over the outcome of the sentence.

That case has been appealed.