HOLLIDAYSBURG — A Hollidaysburg man’s state prison sentence was cut in half Thursday during a resentencing hearing ordered by the state Superior Court.

Michael Lee Forshey, 42, who appealed a sentence of 17.5 to 35 years handed down in 2021 for his drug-trafficking convictions, has a new sentence of six years, one month, to 12 years, eight months.

While Forshey has already been incarcerated for close to six years, defense attorney Zak Goldstein of Philadelphia said in court that the state parole board could require Forshey to participate in a Therapeutic Community program before deeming him eligible for release. Forshey said he is on the waiting list for that in-prison program to help those with addictions.

Forshey, who has been incarcerated at SCI Benner, told Blair County Judge Jackie Bernard that he regularly attends Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and church services.

“When I sit and think, I don’t think about getting high anymore,” Forshey said.

Bernard, who imposed Forshey’s initial sentence in May 2021 to address his ninth conviction for possession with intent to deliver and additional convictions of criminal use of a communications facility and reckless endangerment, asked Forshey on Thursday to tell her what has changed.

“The way I feel,” Forshey said. “I don’t want to go home and get high … This has been a wake-up call.”

That response prompted Bernard to ask Forshey why his earlier drug-related history, including his 2018 arrest for drug delivery resulting in a death, failed to be a wake-up call.

The judge, who presided over Forshey’s August 2020 trial, reminded Forshey that he was living in a halfway house in Coalport, under supervision of the state Department of Corrections, when he secured a day pass and traveled to Hollidaysburg.

“You used a day pass to make a (drug) delivery to someone who ends up dying,” Bernard said.

The jury that evaluated Forshey’s criminal charges acquitted him of selling heroin laced with fentanyl leading to the overdose death of 46-year-old Ronald Baker of East Freedom. But the jury also convicted Forshey of the related drug-trafficking charges based on evidence that included Forshey and Baker’s text messages setting up the heroin sale.

In court Thursday, District Attorney Pete Weeks said he sharply disagreed with portions of the Superior Court panel ruling, issued in May 2023, that he said usurped Bernard’s role as sentencing judge.

“This was clearly an individualized sentence … and I believe you did evaluate the contributing factors,” Weeks said.

The state court panel concluded that Forshey’s initial sentence was “unreasonable” because Bernard assigned a maximum penalty of 15 years to 30 years to the possession with intent to deliver conviction.

The panel pointed out that Forshey was convicted of selling 0.2 grams of fentanyl-laced heroin — and that standard range sentencing guidelines called for 21 to 27 months incarceration — while Bernard imposed 7½ times that amount.

Bernard, in court Thursday, repeated reasons she named two years ago in support of the initial sentence — including Forshey’s 39 arrests and 24 confinements. She also described him as incapable of exercising any kind of self control over his addiction that he was using to justify selling drugs, thereby making him a risk to the community.

In court Thursday, Weeks proposed a new minimum sentence of 93 months — almost eight years’ incarceration — but Bernard said that would require her to come up with reasons beyond what she already provided.

“I don’t know what else I could put on the record to justify giving the 93 months,” the judge said.

Goldstein, in proposing his client’s minimum sentence of six years, one month, assured Bernard that his client is ready to focus on his continued rehabilitation.

“I think he’s done his best to get a handle on his addiction,” Goldstein said.

In a sentencing memorandum filed for Bernard’s review, Goldstein also said Forshey is blaming no one other than himself.

“He understands why the sentence was so long even though it was so personally devastating,” the defense attorney wrote.

In handing down the new sentence, Bernard told Forshey that he will benefit from outdated sentencing guidelines in place at the time of his drug delivery offense. Shortly thereafter, those guidelines were updated with enhancements for drug delivery involving fentanyl.

Forshey also asked the judge to look at more than his criminal record. He asked her to see him as someone who wants to return home to his fiance and be a father to their son and a son to his aging mother.

“You’ll never see me in your courtroom again … with the drugs, I’m done,” Forshey said.

Mirror Staff Writer Kay Stephens is at 814-946-7456.