Johnston draws 3 years for drug rap

PALMER — Sherry Johnston has reached the end of her Oxycontin-dealing case, receiving a 3-year sentence for her crime.

Johnston is the mother of Levi Johnston, who has achieved celebrity status as the father of former governor Sarah Palin’s grandson. Sherry Johnston was busted in December at the culmination of an investigation into allegations she’d been selling her prescriptions.

The investigation began in mid-September 2008 when Alaska State Troopers intercepted a package containing 179 Oxycontin pills. The suspects they arrested in that case led them to Johnston. The investigation continued through Palin’s run for vice president, wrapping up just after her defeat.

At Friday’s hearing, Johnston’s attorney, Rex Butler, said that prison time is going to be rough for his client.

“This kind of jail time is hard time, especially when you have teenagers that you are continuing or attempting to continue to raise,” he said.

He also said that being in the public eye has brought even more complications.

“She has never been a public person,” he said, and being scrutinized as she has been “is an additional punishment because wherever you go now your face is known.”

Johnston will have her medical needs met in prison, Butler said, and Department of Corrections has already started talking to her doctors.

“I believe that DOC is going to find that it will be easy to supervise Sherry Johnston,” he said.

His client declined to say anything when her turn came to talk.

Superior Court Judge Eric Smith, in imposing the sentence, noted that the case had been an unusual one.

He said that the usual sentence for the felony drug count to which Johnston pleaded no contest was five years, but that the parties had agreed to a mitigating factor — that the amount of drugs sold was small.

That mitigator, Smith said, allowed him to go below the required sentence. He said he agreed with the state’s prosecutors that the crime was still a serious one.

“I, like the state, don’t want to minimize what happened,” he said. “Painkillers are a significant issue in the state.”

He also said that, by all accounts, Johnston had learned her lesson.