Carlee Russell was found guilty Wednesday of faking her own kidnapping over the summer in a case that baffled the nation.
The 26-year-old nursing student was convicted of filing a false police report and falsely reporting seeing a baby crawling along an Alabama highway just minutes before she appeared to disappear.
Russell nervously wrings his hands behind his back as he pleads not guilty to the crime despite publicly admitting to the fraud weeks after rescuers launched a search party for him and the imaginary child, AL.com reported.
A Hoover judge, however, recommended a sentence of one year in prison and restitution of $17,874, as well as two fines of $831 each.
Russell and his team plan to appeal the decision to circuit court, with his attorney Emory Anthony telling reporters that a prison sentence is an inappropriate sentence for a Class A felony, especially considering it was Russell’s first offense.
“He has apologized … through me but that’s not good enough. But he has apologized for what happened,” said Anthony.
The attorney noted that Russell has suffered emotionally since the scam made national headlines.
Carlee Russell could face a year in prison for faking her own kidnapping.Carol Robinson
“I don’t want him to have any kind of damage or anything of that nature. So we handled him with kid gloves and tried to make sure his mental state was fine,” he said.
Russell’s motive for lying about his own abduction — and where he was during the 49-hour search — remains a mystery.
The details will eventually be revealed in due course, Anthony said.
The motive behind Russell’s strange crime remains a mystery. Hoover/Mega Police Department
“We’re dealing with the issues with Carlee, and we want the best for Carlee,” Anthony said. “We realize a mistake was made but we don’t want to drag it out now.”
The strange chain of events began on July 13 when Russell called 911 to report seeing a baby crawling along the side of Interstate 459 in Hoover but disappeared before police arrived.
He showed up at his parents’ home two days later, where law enforcement found him “conscious and talking,” despite dispatch reports that he was “unresponsive but breathing.”
Russell reappeared at his parents’ home two days after disappearing on the side of the highway.
Russell initially told police that he had been kidnapped by a white man with orange hair — a lie that was quickly shattered when police revealed that he had googled the kidnapping-themed action movie “Taken” and the AMBER Alert system the day before.
Through his lawyer, he finally admitted to fabricating the whole story.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
