Plea Change in District Court

A 22-year-old woman charged with two crimes changed her pleas at a hearing Thursday in Fourth Judicial District Court in Sheridan. Sheridan Media’s Ron Richter has the details.

At an arraignment hearing in March, Kieylee Stout pleaded “not guilty” to the charges of misdemeanor Driving Under the Influence and Felony Taking a Controlled Substance Into Jail for attempting to smuggle Xanax into the Sheridan County Detention Center. The DUI was the result of Stout driving while under the influence of heroin. Thursday, at a change of plea hearing in District Court, Stout pleaded guilty to both charges pursuant to terms of a plea agreement reached with the State. The plea deal recommends a deferred sentence and three years of supervised probation for the felony charge, and 60 days, suspended in lieu of one-year of supervised probation for the misdemeanor DUI charge, which will run concurrent to the probation for the felony.

District Court Judge John Fenn ordered that a presentence investigation be completed and set the sentencing date for September 28 at 10:30 am. Stout’s bond was continued under the same terms and conditions that were previously set with the added condition that she report immediately to Probation and Parole to advise them of her guilty pleas and to initiate the presentence investigation process. According to the affidavit of probable cause, an officer with the Sheridan Police Department while on patrol on January 2, noticed a vehicle that had been parked and running for a long period of time at the intersection of West 5th Street and Main. When the officer approached the vehicle on foot, he noticed the lone occupant was not conscious and called EMS in case of a medical emergency. After Stout regained consciousness, the officer noticed what appeared to be drug paraphernalia items that indicated recent heroin use.

Stout told the officer that she had taken the drug Xanax earlier in the night and that she was a heroin addict. Stout was then placed under arrest for DUI and was later charged with the felony for attempting to take drugs into the Detention Center.