Theft nets 5-year sentence
BROOKSVILLE –
Jennifer Dennison called the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Tampa a “beautiful place” more than once during her sentencing hearing Wednesday.
The only place where her and her husband Scott got along, according to Dennison, where he could enjoy a beer without her thinking about his drinking problem, his unemployment. Where the casino attendants treated them like best friends, and treated them to drinks, dinners, fishing trips and concert tickets.
“It felt like we were a hundred million miles away from home,” she said.
Dennison was arrested in April 2011 for stealing more than half a million dollars from her in-laws, Laverne and Janet Dennison. Many charges were consolidated into a single grand theft charge of more than $50,000 on a person over the age of 65.
Judge Daniel Merritt Sr. listened to more than three hours of testimony from the Dennisons family members, experts on gambling and addictions and Dennison herself.
“I keep coming back to this problem,” Merritt said. “We have what appears to me to be a despicable, reprehensible, unconscionable act of taking a senior citizen’s life income for a secure retirement.”
Merritt sentenced Dennison to five years in prison. Dennison was taken into custody immediately, though her attorney, Bruce Denson, asked for a three-day furlough.
On top of her prison sentence, Dennison was given 15 years of probation, and required to pay $513,000 in restitutions, with minimum payments of 25 percent of her income when released. Merritt said Dennison may not participate in any form of gambling, and that payments from any future media interviews will go toward paying the family back.
* * * * *
Laverne and Janet Dennison’s children and family members recalled the Dennison’s lives together. They knew hardship and worked hard, never taking vacations or driving extravagant cars, opting instead to save for retirement.
Joe Lake, Janet Dennison’s brother, recalled that when his sister started losing her memory, Laverne Dennison vowed his wife would never be put in a nursing home.
“This crime put her (Janet Dennison) in a nursing home, and she’ll be there until she dies,” said Vera Cannon, the Dennisons’ eldest daughter.
The Dennison children said they had no idea their parents saved more than $500,000. Life insurance policies Jennifer Dennison cashed in were set aside for burial plots, headstone and funeral arrangements, Cannon said.
Laverne Dennison died in 2011 from cancer. Cannon said she knew her father wanted to be buried in the Brooksville Cemetery, but since the life insurance policy and other accounts were cashed in, the Dennisons were only left with about $9,000 in savings. The IRS claimed about $7,500, and Cannon said her father was buried in the veteran cemetery at the “charity” of a local funeral home.
Each witness from the Dennison family said they would like to see Jennifer Dennison sentenced to 10 years in prison with 20 years probation.
“This is about justice for people who lived like people were supposed to live,” said Debra Palmer, another daughter of Laverne and Janet Dennison.
Janet Dennison, who suffers from dementia and lives in a nursing home, was not in court. Scott Dennison, Jennifer’s ex-husband, did not attend the sentencing.
Expert witnesses and doctors called by the defense spent their time on the stand discussing gambling addiction as a manifestation of trauma.
Tiffany Lawrence of the Lawrence Mitigation Group said she has spent nearly 100 hours working on the case pro bono.
“To this day, I haven’t heard of a story so severe,” Lawrence said, adding childhood trauma from a sexually abusive stepfather “definitely contributed to her gambling addiction.”
Lawrence described many specific situations that contributed to her diagnosis of Dennison’s post traumatic stress disorder. Dennison was trying to “process” the abuse — gambling was her coping skill, Lawrence said.
Lawrence also explained how Dennison was a caregiver for the Dennisons, waking up in the middle of the night to “soothe” Janet Dennison’s panic attacks,” and received phone calls eight times a day from her mother-in-law.
Paul Ashe, president of the Florida Council on Compulsive Gambling explained Dennison is a “classic gambler” who constantly chased the initial high from winning.
Ashe said he “wasn’t surprised” by Dennison’s November 2012 suicide attempt just days before she was supposed to be sentenced, saying one out of five compulsive gamblers commit suicide.
“Incarceration wouldn’t accomplish anything,” Ashe said, saying Florida prisons do not have any treatments for gambling and part of recovery is paying restitution.
Prosecutor Mark Simpson questioned the witness saying Jennifer Dennison didn’t “intend harm,” pointing out she liquidated her in-laws’ life savings.
Damon Dye, a doctor of counseling psychology and Dennison’s therapist, said he has spent the past 10 years working with “problem gamblers and their families,” and called the addiction a “hidden disorder” and less understood than alcoholism.
“The worse thing a gambler can do is not get treatment,” Dye said, adding Dennison went to a 36-day rehab in Arizona and attends Gamblers Anonymous meetings. Some from her group therapy were in the courtroom to show support, Dye said.
When Simpson said a gambling addiction is not like being on alcohol or drugs because one doesn’t “ingest anything,” Dye said a brain on a gambling high looks similar to a brain on cocaine.
Simpson said that the $500,000 theft still occurred, which is a crime with or without a gambling addiction.
Jennifer Dennison told her side of the story for the first time in public on the witness stand.
Dennison said she remembers receiving notes from the Dennison siblings thanking her for taking care of their parents, who lived next to Scott and Jennifer Dennison. And that when other siblings were absent, she stepped in to care for her in-laws.
The first time she went in a casino was on her 40th birthday, Dennison testified. It “disgusted her,” and she only went back because they “treated (me) so wonderful.”
Dennison said at first, she was “always winning” — up to $100,000 on New Years Eve, 2009, a Mercedes Benz and a Cadillac. Eventually, she’d call the casino to “lock down” her favorite slot machine and post security so no one could talk to her.
“I didn’t want to get up to go to the bathroom,” Dennison said, choking back tears. “I didn’t want anyone to talk to me … It was better than my first kiss, better than falling in love.”
Dennison said she didn’t start stealing the money because she was losing at the casino, but that it “just happened” her husband was appointed power of attorney over his parents’ finances, and that her husband asked her to do “everything” with the finances.
“I never took a dollar bill out of their house,” Dennison said. The defendant said it was her intention to “steal,” not her husband’s, but that there wasn’t a bad check he didn’t know about.
“In my sick head I thought I could go back and win again and pay it back,” Dennison said.
Speaking to the Dennison family, Jennifer said: “I know all of you hate me and I understand, I do, I’m so sorry … I don’t know how I got here, they are wonderful people and I love them very much.”
In his final rebuttal before sentencing, Simpson said Dennison “blamed everyone in the room but herself,” accepting “not responsibility but inevitability.”
The response to Dennison’s sentencing was emotional by both Jennifer Dennison’s family and the Dennison siblings.
While Dennison was handcuffed, a family member asked the deputies not to cuff her hands behind her back.
“She has a bad arm,” the woman pleaded. “Her arm can’t go behind her back at all.”
