A BANGOR — A Clinton man will spend 71 months in federal prison for robbing the Rite Aid Pharmacy on Moosehead Trail in Newport in March 2015.
James J. Senior, 40, was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Bangor by Judge John A. Woodcock Jr. It was the maximum time available under the federal sentencing guideline.
Senior had pleaded guilty to the robbery charge last June after initially pleading not guilty. Authorities identified him as the suspect after viewing video surveillance images and receiving a tip. Senior turned himself in to the Waterville Police Department on April 1, 2015, a day after the robbery.
“He said that he was an addict and that he had made a stupid mistake,” Assistant U.S. Attorney F. Todd Lowell wrote in the prosecution’s version of events. Senior told police he kept the oxycodone pills he had obtained in the robbery but dumped the hydrocodone-ibuprofen pills.
Senior threatened the pharmacy employees, Lowell wrote, saying he would harm them if they did not give him the oxycodone he demanded. Senior also told them to “hurry up.”
Senior was represented by attorney James S. Nixon, of the Federal Defender’s Office.
Senior had been convicted in December 2004 in Maine on charges of conspiracy to commit drug trafficking as well as drug trafficking, and in 1999 in Massachusetts for assault by means of a dangerous weapon and in 1994 of intimidation of a witness. However, Nixon’s sentencing memo, submitted in January 2016, argued that Senior should not be classified as a career offender and therefore eligible for a lower sentence. Woodcock agreed with that conclusion last month and wrote that the guideline sentence would be 57 to 71 months.
A news release Wednesday from the U.S. Attorney’s Office said that in imposing the sentence, Woodcock “noted the defendant’s ‘horrendous’ criminal history involving 17 convictions — including felony drug trafficking and felony assault and battery convictions — and the ‘chilling’ nature of the robbery.”
Betty Adams — 621-5631
Twitter: @betadams