Drug dealer sentenced to a decade in prison

PALMER — A Wasilla drug dealer was sentenced to 10 years in prison Friday.

Kiel Cavitt, 24, was found guilty at trial in August of 14 felony counts of possessing with intent to sell a laundry list of drugs — 10 morphine pills, 14 ecstasy pills, nine grams of hashish, 32 marijuana plants, 23.5 grams of psychedelic mushrooms and a sheet of eight tabs of LSD.

At trial, Cavitt’s attorney Craig Condie argued his client wasn’t a dealer of hard drugs, just marijuana. The harder drugs on hand were for personal use, he said, bought in bulk with lump sums he received after harvesting his marijuana. The jury didn’t buy it, convicting Cavitt on all counts after an afternoon’s deliberation.

At his sentencing hearing, Condie, argued for the sentence his client eventually received, which was on the lower end of the spectrum available.

He pointed to a finding of the American Bar Association claiming that after 10 years there isn’t much point to keeping a person locked up except to isolate him.

The question thus posed to Superior Court Judge Kari Kristiansen, Condie said, was, “Does he really need to be isolated? And I think the answer is no.”

Most of the drugs, he pointed out, amounted to B felonies. Only the morphine pills, he said, triggered a more serious charge.

“This was a smaller-time operation,” Condie said.

Assistant District Attorney Kerry Corliss, for her part, pointed to Cavitt’s criminal history and his seeming inability to finish drug treatment.

“We have someone who has time and again refused rehabilitation,” Corliss said.

She also pointed to a past felony on Cavitt’s record, describing it as a “failed drug sale in which this defendant shot someone.”

“The felony he does have on his record is part and parcel of what we have here,” Corliss said.

Court records show that in 2004 Cavitt was charged in Anchorage with an assault count that involved injuring someone with a deadly weapon. The case ended with Cavitt pleading no contest to assault.

Corliss asked for a 12-year term with two suspended. The prison term would have been the same as Condie’s request but Cavitt would have had been liable for two more years in prison if he re-offended once he was released.

Kristiansen eventually decided on 10 years with no suspended time.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.