By Nick Ferraro
Pioneer Press
BAYPORT, Minn. — A former Minnesota corrections officer was sentenced Friday to just over two years in federal prison for teaming up with an inmate to smuggle methamphetamine into the Stillwater state prison in 2022.
Faith Rose Gratz, 26, of Circle Pines received a 27-month sentence from U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud in St. Paul after pleading guilty in September 2022 to conspiring to distribute methamphetamine. Tostrud also imposed two years of post-incarceration supervised release.
Gratz and Axel Rene Kramer ran the drug operation at Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater, the state’s largest high-security prison, for at least three months in early 2022, when Kramer was serving a murder sentence. The two had a romantic relationship, according to federal prosecutors.
“I’m not sure what this crime was motivated by,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Harry Jacobs told the court Friday, adding Gratz did receive some money from the drug operation.
Jacobs asked that Gratz be sentenced within the guidelines, which were between seven and nine years in prison. Her attorney, Samuel Edmunds, asked that she receive two years.
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On Tuesday, Tostrud sentenced Kramer to a 15-year prison term and 10 years of post-incarceration supervised release after he pleaded guilty to the same charge in January. Kramer, 37, had been on supervised release since March after serving 14 years in prison on the murder conviction.
Tostrud said at Friday’s sentencing “there are vast differences” in the cases of Gratz and Kramer and that the “disparity between the sentences is warranted.” He noted Gratz’s lack of a criminal record and said she accepted responsibility and cooperated with authorities from the beginning. He added that when Kramer approached Gratz with his plan, she was in a “vulnerable situation” because of a bad marriage.
Nevertheless, Gratz violated public trust and put correctional workers and inmates in danger, Tostrud said.
“She is culpable, but far less culpable than Mr. Kramer,” he said.
Warnings of cell searches
Kramer “used” Gratz to smuggle the drugs into the facility, Jacobs said. First, shortly after Gratz began work as a corrections officer, Kramer asked her to smuggle in a cellphone for him, which she did. She then worked with him to acquire meth from sources outside the prison. Once she brought the meth into the prison, she passed it onto Kramer, who distributed the drug to fellow inmates, according to the federal indictment.
Gratz also warned Kramer about upcoming searches of inmates’ cells so he could hide his phone and drugs to avoid detection.
The drug operation was discovered in April 2022 after prison officers found Kramer’s cellphone. They had exchanged hundreds of text messages with each other about the conspiracy and about their burgeoning romantic relationship, including talk of getting married once Kramer was done serving his prison sentence. Gratz’s cellphone number was saved in Kramer’s phone as “Bbygirl.”
After finding Kramer’s cellphone, prison officers confronted Gratz after she arrived for work on April 8, 2022 . When they served a search warrant, they found half a pound of meth under the back seat of her car.
Gratz later admitted to bringing packages of meth to Kramer six times.
In 2010, Kramer was sentenced to 24 years in prison for the killing of 20-year-old Alberto Samilpa Jr ., who was found shot, stabbed and badly burned north of Windom, Minn. Kramer was one of four men who reached plea deals and were convicted of second-degree murder in the killing and sentenced to prison.
‘Huge mistake’
Before handing down the sentence, Tostrud asked Gratz who was in the courtroom gallery to support her. She said the group included her parents, grandmother and new boyfriend.
Edmonds, Gratz’s attorney, told Tostrud that her father, Joseph Gratz , had written a letter of support that didn’t make it into the case file before the hearing. In the letter, he wrote that he’s been a corrections officer for 24 years and “was devastated to learn what his daughter did,” Edmonds said. He said her father also wrote that she has made positive strides in recent months, including working a job at Dunkin’.
Gratz apologized to the court and her family.
“I realize now what a huge mistake I made,” she said, adding that she lost her family’s trust and several friends. “I am not in that mental state I was in two years ago.”
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