A Colorado man sentenced to 6 1/2 years for stealing powerful painkillers from the hospital where he worked was given an extra year behind bars after he decided to take a family vacation en route to the prison and showed up late to start his sentence.
When Rocky Allen was sentenced in November of 2016, U.S. District Judge Raymond Moore allowed him to self-report to the prison. Allen, who lived in Colorado, asked if he could visit family in Idaho before he starting his sentence in Oregon. Moore denied Allen’s request.
But Allen didn’t listen. He was supposed to show up to the prison on November 23, but didn’t arrive on time. On December 2, Allen’s probation officer called the prison and found out that Allen wasn’t there. He then called Allen, who told him he was at his sister’s house in Idaho, despite being told he could not visit family.
“I honestly didn’t know I couldn’t go through Idaho,” he told Moore on Thursday, when he pled guilty to felony criminal contempt of court. “I agree I went against the order of the court, and I should be punished for that, but I had no intent to be malicious.”
Moore wasn’t having it. “What you told me is a load of crap,” Moore said. “That is pathetic, a lie and ridiculous …You are going to sell that nonsense to me?”
“What he wanted to do was to have a little vacation before he went to prison … Every single day you stayed out it was a new violation of the court order. Every single day,” Moore continued. “There is a brashness. There is a boldness to violating a court order.”
Allen, a former surgical technologist, repeatedly stole fentanyl from patients at the Swedish Medical Center in Englewood, Colo. It wasn’t his first time he had stolen drugs from a health care facility. He was court-martialed in 2011 while he was in the Navy and stationed at a hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan, for stealing fentanyl. He was subsequently fired from various hospitals in three states before Swedish hired him in late 2015.
Allen is now serving 7 1/2 years at the Federal Correctional Institution in Sheridan, Oregon.
