After ten months in prison, an overturned sentence may be the answer to Lisa Livingston’s prayers.
Livingston was sentenced to 30 years in prison in March of 2018 for drug crimes committed in 2013.
In a fight to appeal, attorneys Jennifer Culotta and Stacy Uliana brought the case in front of the Indiana Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled the sentence by Judge Steven Owen of Orange County in Indiana “inappropriate in light of Livingstons’ offenses and character.”
“I'm excited to have her home. I honestly did not think this day was going to come,” her daughter, Lacey Livingston told WHAS11 News on Wednesday.
Culotta said it’s Livingston’s remarkable recovery that saved her. Not only is she clean, but before her sentence, she was helping other women get clean, too. Livingston opened a halfway house in New Albany for a dozen women called The Breakaway, where they could live during recovery.
“This decision says if you do things like that, we as a court will take note and we will reward your efforts and not simply throw you in a cage,” Culotta explained.
Livingston’s passion to help others hasn’t stopped since incarceration. A former inmate with Livingston was so inspired, she’s now in recovery at the Breakaway.
“She just has nothing but good things to say about my mother, and how she's helping women in there also,” her daughter explained.
Livingston will still have to serve 23 years, but under the community corrections program.
“Community corrections is somewhere between prison and supervised probation, think of it more like a super probation,” Culotta said.
Her release date is still unclear. The attorney general has thirty days to appeal the Supreme Court's decision.
WHAS11 News did reach out to the judge who ordered the original 30 year sentence and have not heard back at this time.