ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 28, 1996 TAG: 9602280089
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
An Old Southwest Roanoke woman who has not been able to control her urge to steal mail was put on five years' probation by a federal judge Tuesday and ordered to continue mental health counseling.
Ann Kennedy Dickens, 62, was caught in August with 450 pieces of mail belonging to her neighbors. It was the third time in five years that she had been arrested for stealing neighbors' mail.
Dickens' psychiatrist testified at her sentencing that Dickens suffers from paranoid delusional disorder, a ``chronic, unremitting mental illness that is sometimes difficult to treat.'' Even with medication, Dr. Margaret Gorbatenko said, Dickens will experience symptoms for the rest of her life. But being under supervision will help, the psychiatrist said.
Dickens' attorney, Sharon Chickering, said Dickens disagrees with the diagnosis.
The prosecutor and Dickens' attorney agreed that incarceration would not help Dickens or benefit the public. A plea agreement she signed last fall called for probation for five years, the maximum allowed for the crime.
U.S. District Judge Samuel Wilson told Dickens she must continue with mental health treatment as long as her probation officer requires it.
``You cannot continue to steal mail,'' he warned Dickens. ``In the event you come back before me, you will be institutionalized.''
In 1990, Dickens was arrested with more than 5,000 pieces of mail stolen from her neighbors at the Pebble Creek apartment complex. The U.S. Attorney's Office dropped the charge after she was declared insane at the time of the thefts.
In 1993, Dickens was arrested again with 400 pieces of mail from Walnut Avenue Southeast. She agreed to get help and was put into a pretrial diversion program.
Dickens never opened the mail and kept it neatly stacked in her apartment. She was not discriminating in her thefts; she took bills, letters, magazines and even junk mail.
``This has been a very difficult case from the perspective of the United States,'' prosecutor Tony Giorno told the judge. ``She was taking it not for any personal gain ..., but based on a medical disorder she suffered."
The mail discovered in her apartment last summer - taken over several months - was returned to its owners by postal inspectors.
Tuesday was the first time since shortly after her arrest that Dickens was able to move about freely outside her apartment. Until her sentencing, she was allowed to leave her Third Street apartment only Wednesday and Friday evenings for walks in the neighborhood and on Sundays, when no mail is delivered.
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