Disbarred Baltimore lawyer Susan Fila was sentenced today to 20 years in prison for her botched plan to hide her drug-driven embezzlement by killing her law partner in a staged carjacking.
Before sentencing Fila, 42, Baltimore Circuit Judge Roger W. Brown said, "I have before me an individual who had a drug habit, but in addition to that habit she did in fact design and carry out a scheme to kill somebody. Not just anybody but a close friend and partner."
Fila showed no reaction as the sentence as announced. Her lawyer, Gregg L. Bernstein, later said the ruling was not unexpected.
During the hearing, Fila said she was sorry that her victim, lawyer Charles Lamasa, was not in court to hear her apology. "What I did was terrible, horrible. . . . Standing before the court, I'm not the person who committed those terrible acts. I understand how my addiction made me the person who did."
During the hearing, Howard "Chip" Silverman, a drug addiction treatment expert, said Fila had a $500- to $700-a-day heroin habit at the time of the April 14 incident. "It's basically shooting the dope every 20 minutes," he said.
Mr. Lamasa, who was at a foreclosure auction on the courthouse steps at the time of the sentencing, said later, "The whole thing is a tragedy. I'm kind of tired of it. I'm glad my 15 minutes of fame are almost over."
Sentencing for Tamme L. Newton, the other woman convicted in the attack, was postponed until Jan. 17.
In April, Fila drove wildly through Baltimore's streets hoping her partner would bleed to death, according to a transcript of Newton's statement to police. And after the assailant took over at the wheel -- while the car sped north on the Jones Falls Expressway -- and dropped Mr. Lamasa off at a hospital, she refused Fila's demands that she run him over.
Fila wanted Mr. Lamasa killed the night of April 14 because she expected her embezzlement from the firm to be discovered by a bank the next morning, Newton also said.
"She said she had to get rid of Chuck before 9 o'clock the next morning and she needed some help," Newton said, according to a transcript of her taped statement.
By pleading guilty, the women avoided the possibility of life in prison -- the maximum sentence for attempted first-degree murder.
Fila had made her mark as a medical malpractice lawyer .
Mr. Lamasa, a former city prosecutor, was stabbed six times by Newton, who ambushed him from the back of Fila's car. Prosecutors suggested that he had been drugged by Fila. And they said that during the attack, she drove past two hospitals despite orders to stop by Mr. Lamasa, who had overpowered Newton and gained control of the "survival-type" knife.