May 10—An East Windsor man who orchestrated the use of 150 phony prescriptions to obtain a total of 1.6 kilograms of the prescription narcotic oxycodone for street sale — but has done well on pretrial supervision since his 2019 arrest — was sentenced Tuesday to a year and a day in federal prison.

OXYCODONE SALES

DEFENDANT: Jayson Kemp, 46, of East Windsor.

GUILTY PLEAS: Conspiracy to distribute oxycodone.

SENTENCE: A year and a day in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release.

The sentence imposed on Jayson Kemp, 46, by Judge Victor A. Bolden in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport for conspiring to distribute oxycodone was far below the minimum of more than 21 years recommended by federal guidelines. It was also significantly below the sentence of at least five years sought by prosecutor John T. Pierpont Jr.

But it was longer than the sentence of time served sought by defense lawyer Francis L. O'Reilly, which the prosecutor said in his sentencing memo would come to 13 days.

After Kemp is released from prison, he will be on supervised release, which is similar to probation, for three years.

The scheme ran from 2012 to 2014, according to the prosecutor. Kemp illegally got prescription paper from health care providers. Then he or co-conspirators recruited people with Medicaid benefits, all drug addicts, to fill the "prescriptions" for oxycodone that Kemp and others wrote on the papers, forging the provider's signature.

The Medicaid recipient would be paid $50 and Kemp would sell the pills illegally.

The prosecutor said 696 Connecticut residents have died from overdoses involving oxycodone since 2015. But he argued in his sentencing memo that the bigger danger is that oxycodone is part of a "slippery slope" to heroin and fentanyl.

Pierpont said oxycodone abuse can start with over-prescription by a doctor or trying a pill at a party and can rapidly lead to addiction and tolerance to the drug. Needing more to "get by," the person will buy pharmaceutical-grade oxycodone of the type Kemp was selling. But it becomes too expensive for an addicted person.

"Heroin is cheaper and stronger," the prosecutor wrote. "Fentanyl is cheaper and stronger still. It is not hard to see the progression that has led too many people to lose their lives."

"There is something particularly insidious about selling oxycodone," he added later. "Because it is a prescription medicine that serves a real medical purpose, it has a veneer of legitimacy about it. People can rationalize their decision to 'pop pills' by thinking of it as 'just medicine.'"

The defense lawyer said in his sentencing memo that Kemp experienced significant physical abuse as a child.

"This treatment engendered in Jayson both a childlike bafflement and a pernicious sense that he was different, less-than, that in some way he deserved the brutal punishments he was receiving," O'Reilly wrote.

Yet Kemp has close relationships with three of his four children and has a "long-term, long-distance" relationship with a woman in Jamaica, the defense lawyer wrote.

He said Kemp's performance on pretrial supervision since August 2019, while free on $150,000 bond, has been a "remarkable success," with only one positive drug test early on. Kemp has obtained a commercial driver's license and a real estate license and has been working for a real estate company, "deploying his considerable charisma," the defense lawyer wrote.

But the prosecutor said Kemp's long criminal record includes an incident as recent as February 2019, "a particularly vicious domestic assault in front of a child that involved a choking and striking the victim with a cane."

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