A Battle Ground woman convicted this week of vehicular homicide won’t be allowed to take her baby with her to prison, a judge said Friday.
The state’s prison system allow moms to keep their babies only when they are convicted of a nonviolent crime and the child was born while the mom was incarcerated.
Clark County Superior Court Judge Roger Bennett said that’s two strikes against Shastina M. Lapping: She gave birth in March while awaiting trial; and vehicular homicide, a Class A felony, is a violent crime.
“I can’t help you with that,” Bennett told the 25-year-old.
Lapping was sentenced to 31 months in prison Monday after admitting she drove drunk and caused a May 9, 2009, crash that killed her 25-year-old friend, Emily Buck, also of Battle Ground.
At the initial sentencing, she told the judge she thought a woman could take her child to prison if the sentence was 30 months or less, then implored him to alter her sentence so she served 30 days in jail and 30 months in prison.
Bennett set another hearing Friday to give attorneys time to research the matter. Senior Deputy Prosecutor Jim David said he and defense attorney Clark Fridley consulted the Department of Corrections, which gave them the rules.
Fridley said he also learned that the Department of Corrections allows rare exceptions and that Lapping would have to petition for the department to consider her case as an exception.
“It’s up to the DOC to make that determination,” Bennett said.
Before the judge finalized her sentence, Lapping asked him to consider changing her punishment. She said she did research on a bill passed this summer, allowing judges to forgo the sentencing guidelines in nonviolent offenses and, instead, assign convicts to intensive counseling.
“I’m asking you to consider this option,” Lapping said, as she handed him a packet of material about the bill.
Bennett said, again, that vehicular homicide is a violent crime and he can’t change the sentence.
As the judge discussed with attorneys about when Lapping should surrender to custody officers, the petite brown-haired woman began dabbing her eyes with tissue.
She continued to weep after he told her to report on Aug. 19.
The single-vehicle crash occurred at about 1 a.m. on a Saturday. Lapping, Buck and their friends had been celebrating Buck’s birthday at the Prairie Bar & Grill in Brush Prairie. In three hours, Lapping consumed four drinks, Fridley said. An hour and a half after the crash, Lapping had a blood-alcohol content of 0.13 percent, above the legal limit of 0.08 percent.
Some of the women’s friends celebrating at the tavern that night asked Lapping not to drive and tried to keep Buck from getting into the car, David said.
Lapping was driving about 78 mph in a 50 mph zone in the 17500 block of Northeast 142nd Avenue. When Lapping approached a curve, she failed to stay on the road, and her Buick flipped and struck a tree, David said.
Buck suffered blunt-force injuries and died in a hospital July 3, 2009.
“It’s a sad case all around,” David said after Friday’s hearing.
Laura McVicker: 360-735-4516 or laura.mcvicker@columbian.com.
