A federal appeals court Tuesday upheld the conviction and 28-month prison sentence of a Northwest Florida woman who was part of a scheme to defraud a federal drought-relief program for farmers.
A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments by Danyel Witt, a Holmes County resident who was among 29 people indicted after an investigation involving the federal Livestock Forage Disaster Program.
The ruling said farmers in the Holmes County area became eligible for the assistance program because of a 2016 drought. Duane Crawson, who was county executive director for the Farm Service Agency, recruited people to file false claims and received kickbacks, according Tuesday’s ruling.
Witt was accused of filing false applications to receive $9,661 from the federal government, with one of the applications filed in the name of her daughter. In part, Witt claimed that she owned cows and bulls that she did not have.
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While Crawson and most other defendants in the case entered pleas, Witt went to trial and was convicted and sentenced to 28 months in prison, the ruling said. In the appeal, Witt challenged the conviction and the prison term, contending she should have been sentenced to house arrest. But the appeals court, in a 17-page decision, rejected the arguments.
“The weight of the evidence does not preponderate against a guilty verdict in this case,” said the decision, written by Judge Kevin Newsom and joined by Judges Stanley Marcus and Donald Middlebrooks.
“Therefore, the district court did not abuse its discretion when it denied Witt’s motion for a new trial. Next, Witt contends that the sentence the district court imposed is substantively unreasonable. We disagree.” Unlike with other defendants, the decision said Witt did not pay kickbacks to Crawson.
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