Categories
Life

Life in Ruins

So I ended up pleading guilty to misdemeanor child endangerment, served my weekend in the McKean County Jail, completed the months of house arrest, and began the ridiculous and harrowing process of being on probation in Potter County, Pennsylvania.

My ex-husband, Dubya, and my parents joined forces and sued me together for custody of my three children in a combined case. Of course, they both had lawyers and I did not.

They won.

Somewhere in there, I went snowmobiling with a group of friends late at night, because I had no kids and nothing better to do with my time. They stopped at a friend’s house to warm up, and everyone besides me was smoking weed. I was sitting by an open window smoking a cigarette. However, the weed smoke was going past my face on its way out the open window. 

I was drug tested the next morning, and the line for negative on the THC window was fainter than the other lines. My probation officer decided to send the sample out to a laboratory instead of letting it go. I tried to explain what had happened, but she didn’t believe me.

I tested positive for 17 nanograms of THC, which is two nanograms over the arbitrary cutoff for negative for Potter County Probation. Normally the cutoff is 50 nanograms. 

In Potter County, it’s 15.

That two nanograms of THC bought me a year at the Potter County Women’s Recovery Center.  

An entire year.

In the year that I was there, not one other resident was sentenced to that much time there.


Discover more from Love, Justine

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Jessica Kenley's avatar

By Jessica Kenley

Jessica Lynne Kenley is an independent author, freelance writer, and news reporter based in Coudersport, Pennsylvania. Born in Buffalo, New York, in 1981, she has built a diverse professional background centered around writing, editing, and content creation, focusing heavily on social justice and human interest stories.

Leave a Reply

Discover more from Love, Justine

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading