A federal judge has upheld sentencing for a Utah woman who said she pleaded guilty to an $11.6 million real estate scam only to avoid spending more time in Weber and Davis county jails while awaiting trial. 

Portia Louder, 45, says she spent days on end — naked and afraid, delusional and paranoid — in cells while withdrawing from narcotics addictions and was terrified to go back.

But U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby in Salt Lake City rejected Louder’s plea withdrawal request in a memorandum decision Thursday, Dec. 22, saying she “has not raised any doubt that her plea was made competently and without coercion.”

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Louder’s court and jail saga began in 2011 when a grand jury indicted her and two men in a fraud scheme that cost mortgage lenders millions in fraudulently obtained loans. She fought the charges for three years before her attorneys and federal prosecutors negotiated a plea deal.

She pleaded guilty to two felonies on Aug. 8, 2014, and was sentenced in February 2015 to seven years in federal prison and ordered to pay $11.6 million in restitution.

But in March this year, her attorneys filed a motion to vacate the sentence and allow Louder to go back to the pretrial process. She argued she was delusional and paranoid from cold-turkey drug withdrawals that she endured in the Davis and Weber jails, and she feared that unless she pleaded guilty, she would go back to one of the county jails while the case ground on.

“At the time I entered the plea, I was mentally unstable,” Louder said in a court document. “Also, I was coerced to enter a guilty plea by the threat that I would go back to a jail that had brutalized me. I was delusional that day.”

She said her lawyers told her Shelby would accept her guilty plea and let her out of custody until sentencing.

“In light of what the county jail system had done to me and what I believed they were going to do again … I would have signed anything and said anything to be released,” she said.

Federal pretrial detainees are managed by the U.S. Marshals Service, but those inmates are routinely housed in county jails under contract.

A MISSED DRUG TEST

Louder was free awaiting trial until April 22, 2014, when she was arrested for violating the terms of her release, for not submitting to observed drug testing. A judge ordered her to jail for a week and she was taken to the Davis County Jail.

She said she had a “very substantial OxyContin habit” that she was weaning away from by taking Suboxone, a drug commonly used to help addicts get off narcotics. 

“But I was addicted to Suboxone and I told an officer I needed my medication,” Louder said. “She acted like I was a spoiled brat.”

RELATED: New avenues sought for drug detox in Utah jails

Local jails usually do not allow inmates to bring in prescriptions. Jail doctors handle any medication orders, but narcotics withdrawal medications often are not given behind bars.

After getting out of the Davis jail, a judge ordered Louder back into custody for a mental competency evaluation. Marshals took her to the Weber County Jail.

She said her withdrawal symptoms struck again. She said she remembers pushing two guards and then she ended up in an isolation cell.

“I was held with no clothes, towel or even a mattress or blanket,” she said in her court declaration. “Male guards walked by and both gawked at me and taunted me. I was held naked for five days.” She said there was no toilet and she was told to “go on the floor like an animal.”

Kevin Burton, chief deputy sheriff in charge of the jail, said Tuesday he could not comment on her allegations because of a federal civil rights lawsuit Louder has filed against the two jails.

But in general, he said, “it is common to manage inmates who present a danger to themselves or others in close management cells.”

OPIOID ADDICTION DIAGNOSED

Louder was transferred to a federal facility in Washington state for a mental competency evaluation, according to court records. She was diagnosed with severe opioid use disorder, but no medical treatment was ordered and she was found competent to stand trial.

She was transferred back to the Davis jail. Court records show Davis jail medical personnel chronicled uncontrolled behavior between then and early August, such as the night she broke a fire sprinkler in her cell, thinking it was a camera watching her.

“It was determined she would need medications to calm her down,” a jail log said. “She is very delusional … she feels that we are changing the Book of Mormon and not giving her the real one.”

Louder was kept in the jail’s medical unit, Davis County Sheriff’s Sgt. DeeAnn Servey said Tuesday, Dec. 27.

“It is a common practice to house individuals in the medical unit to monitor their physical and mental health,” Servey said in an email. “You are provided with bedding, clothing and the normal necessities inside the medical unit. The nursing staff is able to monitor your physical health more closely if you are assigned to this unit.”

Louder’s suit against the jails, filed in December 2015, is in the pretrial process in U.S. District Court.

In his ruling on her fraud plea, Shelby said he thoroughly interviewed Louder about her state of mind on the day of sentencing and she exhibited mental clarity.

“The record demonstrates … Louder understood that her plea was in no way connected with the court’s eventual custody decision,” Shelby wrote. 

SCAM TARGETED EXPENSIVE HOMES

Federal prosecutors said in the indictment that Louder “was the driving force” behind a scheme in which she recruited straw buyers for expensive homes in Alpine, Highland and Draper.

With the straw buyers’ cooperation, she was able to drive up homes’ sale value on fraudulent loan applications. For example, she paid one homeowner $1 million for the dwelling, but had received $2.7 million of inflated loan funds. She and her co-conspirators pocketed the difference.

Her brother, Chad Louder, and another participant, Dustin Wilcox, pleaded guilty to felonies. Each was sentenced to four years’ probation plus restitution.

Louder is serving her sentence in a low-security federal prison in Waseca, Minnesota.

You can reach reporter Mark Shenefelt at mshenefelt@standard.net or 801 625-4224. Follow him on Twitter at @mshenefelt and like him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SEmarkshenefelt.