Mitchener eligible for transition program
GREENCASTLE -- Putnam County Circuit Court Judge Matthew Headley has 45 days to decide whether or not to release a Roachdale woman serving a prison sentence for stealing from a local special education cooperative into a community transition program.
Tammy Y. Mitchener, 34, was sentenced on July 23, 2009 after being found guilty of stealing more than $56,000 from Old National Trail, where she was employed as a treasurer. She was given a five-year sentence, with three years to be executed and two years to be spent on probation.
Mitchener was convicted on one count of Class C felony corrupt business influence and one count of Class D felony theft. She has been serving her sentence at the Indiana Women's Prison in Indianapolis. The Indiana Department of Correction website lists her earliest possible release date as Jan. 21, 2011.
Should she be released into a DOC Community Transition Program, Mitchener would still technically be a DOC inmate.
"She is eligible for the program now, but we're waiting on the judge's approval or denial," said CTP representative Cindy Carter. "She could either be put on home detention or work release."
Carter said it would likely be late October before any decision on the matter was made.
On Nov. 4, 2009, Mitchener's attorney, Bob Perry, filed a request on behalf of his client, asking that her place of incarceration be changed from prison to home detention.
An objection to the request was filed the next day by Putnam Count Chief Deputy Prosecutor Justin Long, and Headley denied the request on Nov. 17.
Mitchener was initially arrested on Dec. 2, 2008. She bonded out of jail the same day, and did not serve any jail time until she was sentenced.
According to court records, Mitchener wrote $56,639.19 worth of checks from the ONT's account to a vendor called PC Technologies, which turned out to be a dummy corporation she set up and opened a bank account for.
Mitchener deposited the checks she wrote into the PC Technologies account and then moved the money into her personal account, which was at a different bank, using online banking services.