Sentence tests ‘soul mates’

Shadows clung to Wendy Sprouse as she strode into a meeting that July day but she claims never to have sensed the demons stirring.

Her boss confronted her about embezzlement convictions she had never disclosed, then fired the Waynesboro woman, promising to review her work.

Moments later, Sprouse’s sister-in-law, Rhonda Whitmer, arrived at the office, unaware.
“You could tell by the looks and tension on faces that something had happened,” Whitmer said. “Wendy, she had this look.”

In tears, Sprouse hurried Whitmer outside, saying her employer had accused her of stealing money and hiding her past.
“I told her: ‘If you didn’t do it, you won’t have anything to worry about,’ ” Whitmer said. “I knew her past had caught up to her.”

On that day, July 10, 2007, another odyssey began in a life filled with them.
Last year, a jury convicted Sprouse, 40, of embezzling $17,733 from Re/Max Advantage Sweeney Properties LLC in Waynesboro. On Nov. 7, a jury dealt a roundhouse blow, recommending the stiffest embezzlement sentence anyone in town had seen: 22 years and six months in prison. That’s more than seven times longer than sentencing guidelines.

And last month, came the second shot: A judge upheld the sentence, though grudgingly. Even the hard-boiled prosecutor winced at the punishment.

An appeal for a reduced sentence is under way. It will take money and months, but Sprouse’s husband, Darrell, 33, and her in-laws vow they will stick through legal battles in a system they view as riddled with injustice.

In the meantime, a couple cling to love as time yawns before them.
“You could take it all if she was standing beside me,” Darrell Sprouse said, motioning to his home. “She’s my everything.”

‘Soul mates’
Darrell and Wendy met in 2004 at the Coors brewing plant in Elkton, where Darrell had been employed for seven years.
They were dating a few months when Wendy began a diversion sentence in Richmond for her convictions on charges of embezzling $7,000 and $8,000 from Rockingham County businesses. For six months, Wendy was detained at night and worked days at a Burger King in the capital city.

Darrell was determined to endure the wait.
Both had been through difficult separations: for Wendy, a divorce leaving her in joint custody of her three teenage children; for Darrell, a breakup aggravated by his discovery that the child he raised was not biologically his own.

“My life went 180 degrees because of Wendy,” Darrell said.
The Sprouses don’t try to say what held them together, but they have a name for it: soul mates.
“We just have that kind of relationship,” Wendy said in a visitation interview at Rockingham Regional Jail. “We are soul mates. There’s no doubt on my mind.”

Darrell’s parents also took to Wendy.
“My parents just kind of went head over heels for her,” Whitmer said. “She just looked at the time like your all-American pretty lady who was happy to be a part of our family.”

Darrell and Wendy married June 17, 2006, in his backyard.
“I started a new life with him,” Wendy said. “Everything was going just fine.”
Confrontation
Over the course of two years working as Kevin Sweeney’s personal assistant, Sprouse became a trusted employee, working weekends and covering extra tasks at Sweeney Properties.

“She was well-liked,” Sweeney said. “She fit in with the culture.”
But he didn’t know of her money-handling convictions, which, in violation of her probation, she had not disclosed.
According to trial testimony, Sprouse performed a disputed amount of work on rental properties and wrote herself checks for amounts totaling $16,000 from Sweeney’s accounts. Handwriting experts could not conclusively say who wrote the checks.

Sprouse admits she should not have been handling money, but she and her husband said she toiled tirelessly for Sweeney.
“She worked her butt off,” Darrell said.
Trial testimony raised doubt as to the existence of some homes where Wendy said she worked.
“I just did what I thought was right in notifying the authorities,” Sweeney said.
But even Sweeney is taken aback by the severity of her sentence.
“It’s not something that has given me any happiness,” he said.
Legal marathon
Before the Sprouse case, the longest embezzlement sentence in area history was imposed on Barbara McManama in 2004, attorneys said. For six guilty pleas she was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Like Wendy Sprouse, McManama had two prior convictions. But her theft was about $100,000, and cost co-workers their jobs.

“[Sprouse] didn’t steal some child’s innocence and take some person’s life, but she’s been given a sentence more serious than some child molesters and murderers,” said her defense attorney, David Hargett, who picked up the case between trial and sentencing.

The Sprouses have many qualms about the handling of the case, most of which won’t even factor into their appeal. Darrell keeps folders full of documents he wishes were introduced at trial and he maintains Wendy never requested a jury.

Juries are notoriously severe, with average sentences four times longer than judges’, according to a Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission report.

Juries are not informed of state sentencing guidelines, which probation officers calculate for most cases based on judgments for similar trials. In 2008, juries matched guidelines in 42 percent of cases.

In Sprouse’s case, guidelines recommended three years at most, a fact especially irksome to relatives. The Sprouses lament the judge’s adherence, too. Statewide, judges reduce just 10 percent of jury sentences, according to the sentencing commission.

“There is a very good reason why all other states except for three have done away with jury sentencing,” Hargett said, adding that severe juries deter defendants from exercising their rights to jury trial.

But that argument would only be a side note as Hargett’s appeal for a sentence reduction focuses on the “single larceny doctrine.” He will argue that a single embezzlement count accurately describes the “single scheme” for which Sprouse was convicted.

The appeal may take a year.
“I don’t care if I need to take it to the governor,” Darrell Sprouse said.
He vows to spare no expense, right down to paying for nightly 10-minute calls from Wendy, at about $8 each.
“It keeps me sane,” Wendy said of his calls and weekly visits. “The reason I don’t give up is because of [Darrell]. He doesn’t quit. ... I just know God is not going to let me do 22-and-a-half years.”

Wendy’s children also visit.
“I just hate it for my whole family,” she said. “There’s a possibility I may never watch my children get married. It’s like dying. The whole world goes on without you.”

Whitmer worries that Wendy’s case will cause the world to pass up the Sprouses as well. “Is this going to be what they live the rest of their lives doing?” she asks.

That’s a question Darrell Sprouse cannot understand.
“When you love somebody, you’ll do whatever it takes,” he said.
Animosity
Darrell and his parents, by all accounts, have been unrelenting in their support for Wendy. But even before the devastating guilty verdict, the case took its toll, especially on Whitmer, Darrell’s sister.

Whitmer said she had warned family about Sprouse’s past. When the charges came, Whitmer wasn’t shocked. Instead, she said she found a different surprise.

As Whitmer prepared for a second marriage, she said, the attention of her family was on Sprouse’s legal battle.
“It created a lot of animosity,” Whitmer said.
Two months before Sprouse’s trial, when Whitmer remarried, she said, neither her parents nor her brother attended the ceremony.

“It hurt,” she said. “How can you not come to my wedding and go sit in a courtroom for days?”
Other factors kept the family from the wedding, they said.
Darrell’s mother, Kitty Sprouse, was also shocked by the charges, despite knowing about Wendy’s past. As a credit manager, Kitty could not imagine getting away with embezzlement.

“If you’ve done it before, you’re going to get caught,” she said.
Testimony at the November trial filled an entire day. On the second day, the jury announced the sentence.
Judge Humes J. Franklin upheld the punishment despite defense arguments pointing out that full restitution had been paid to Sweeney. Franklin noted his allegiance to the jury, but said his decision was made easier knowing an appeals court would review it.

The hearing rattled relatives, former co-workers and even prosecutor Thomas Weidner, known for his tough-as-nails reputation.

“It is a tragedy for children when we put parents in prisons,” Weidner said later. “It’s something we don’t take lightly.”

But, he added, “She had many opportunities to accept responsibility for stealing the money and she never did.
“Twelve citizens of Waynesboro delivered a judgment that they thought was fair and just. ... The fact that the restitution was paid [anonymously] highlights the continued denial to accept responsibility for her crimes.”