Federal Judge Suggests Drug-Addicted Convict Undergo Sterilization Before Sentencing

A federal judge suggested that an Oklahoma mother of seven, who admitted to using drugs and counterfeiting checks, be sterilized after missing several court dates, according to reports.

Summer Thyme Creel, 34, confessed to producing counterfeit checks, but not before she agreed to undergo an optional sterilization procedure hinted by a judge during a hearing last year. She decided to have the surgery in 2017, reported KOCO, an ABC affiliate in Oklahoma.

In an order last June, U.S. District Judge Stephen Friot said that Creel should consider sterilization after she failed to show up to sentencing hearings because she was in jail or undergoing drug tests. Friot highlighted that Creel had relinquished custody of six of her seven kids and that she might have used drugs during her pregnancies.

"Comparing the dates of Ms. Creel's periods of habitual use of crack cocaine and methamphetamine ... with the dates of birth of her seven children, it appears highly likely that some of Ms. Creel's children were conceived, carried and born while Ms. Creel was a habitual user of these illicit substances," the judge wrote.

Creel’s court-appointed defense attorney Brett Behenna urged against the surgery, which would prevent her from having children.

"I spoke with her in detail about it and she voluntarily wanted to do it," Behenna said, according to KOCO.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Perry had asked the judge not to weigh Creel’s decision against her during sentencing, according to a sentencing memo obtained by the Oklahoman.

"Creel not only has a fundamental constitutional right to procreate ... but she admits that she had an interest in an elective sterilization procedure even before the court's order of June 16," the prosecutor wrote. "Furthermore, Creel's decision to have (or not have) additional children is sufficiently removed from the type of criminal activity involved in this case that such a factor is irrelevant to determining a sentence."

An Oklahoma court initially charged Creel during a hearing in 2016. She pleaded guilty to using a $202.22 counterfeit check at a Walmart in 2014. The judge postponed her sentencing several times after Creel failed to appear.