Dischman gets 3 to 12 months for violations
A Butler County judge Friday resentenced Kasey R. Dischman to up to a year in prison for violating her probation and pretrial supervision.
Dischman, 31, of Butler admitted to several violations — including smoking crack cocaine — at a hearing before Judge William Shaffer.
The defendant is accused of endangering her then-unborn child and her 8-year-old daughter after overdosing on heroin last year at her former East Butler home.
She was free on house arrest while awaiting trial in the case.
Additionally, she was on probation stemming from a felony shoplifting conviction in 2016. It was that case for which she was resentenced.
Represented at the hearing by public defender Maura Palumbi, Dischman acknowledged the violations but said little else.
Shaffer, in turn, revoked her probation and sentenced her to 3 to 12 months in Butler County Prison. Following her jail time Dischman will begin another two-year probation stint.
She also was ordered to undergo a drug and alcohol evaluation at the jail.
Dischman's latest legal troubles began Aug. 4 and 5, when the GPS tracker on her electronic monitoring device showed that she was at “unauthorized locations,” according to county probation officials and court documents.
Those locations were a motel on Route 8 south in Butler Township and a home in Pittsburgh's Lincoln-Lemington neighborhood.
Probation officers picked her up Monday when she arrived for work at a fast-food restaurant in Butler Township.
Things got worse for Dischman after she was taken to the county jail. There, said county Detective Tim Fennell, she was found with a crack pipe.
She also “did test positive for and admitted to smoking crack cocaine,” documents said.
Dischman last year was arrested and charged with felony aggravated assault of an unborn child following her alleged overdose June 22, 2017, in East Butler.
State police accused her of injecting a stamp bag of heroin and overdosing on the floor of her bathroom. She was seven months pregnant at the time.
She was flown to UPMC Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh and subsequently placed on a ventilator after suffering cardiac arrest.
She was transferred to Magee-Women's Hospital of UPMC in Pittsburgh, where doctors performed an emergency cesarean section.
The baby, a girl, survived but suffered “lasting injuries,” court documents said.
County prosecutors later added three additional charges — misdemeanor counts of endangering the welfare of children, corruption of minors and possession of a controlled substance.
Those charges, authorities said, were based on evidence that Dischman's 8-year-old daughter also was at the defendant's home at the time of the overdose, and that a hypodermic needle was found there.
Shaffer in October dismissed the lone felony charge, ruling that state law exempts pregnant women from prosecution for crimes against their unborn children.
The district attorney's office later appealed the ruling to the state Superior Court. The court has yet to rule on the appeal.
Shaffer in December released Dischman into pretrial supervision, which including house arrest with electronic monitoring.
Her overdose came about a week after she was released from county prison where she had been serving a six-month sentence for shoplifting.
A two-time convicted shoplifter, Dischman pleaded guilty in the case to a felony count of retail theft for stealing $44 worth of clothing items from a Butler store.
She was sentenced to 6 to 12 months in prison followed by three years on probation.
