64-year-old woman faces prison term for meth conviction

A 64-year-old woman in a wheelchair, on oxygen, faces more than five years in prison for a methamphetamine-related conviction this week in Spokane County Superior Court.

Joyce Darlene Biby also faces a yet-unscheduled trial in Pend Oreille County Superior Court on charges that she manufactured methamphetamine and that she possessed the drug with intent to deliver it while awaiting her Spokane County trial.

Spokane County Deputy Prosecutor David Stevens said Biby faces a standard range of 52/3 to 81/3 years in prison when she is sentenced for her jury conviction Wednesday for possessing ephedrine or pseudoephredrine with intent to manufacture methamphetamine.

Biby’s Spokane trial was delayed, among other reasons, by sanity examinations that eventually showed she and her 61-year-old co-defendant, Virgil R. Montgomery were mentally competent.

A jury convicted Montgomery in May 2005 of possessing ephedrine or pseudoephredrine with intent to manufacture methamphetamine. He had less criminal history than Biby and was sentenced to 41/4 years in prison.

Testimony indicated Montgomery had large amounts of over-the-counter cold medicine as well as supplies needed to turn the cold medicine into methamphetamine. Montgomery told jurors that he was an ordained minister and that the supplies, including eight boxes of matches and a gallon of acetone, were for ordinary household uses.

Pend Oreille County court documents say Biby was living with Newport resident Andrea Marie Smith, 42, in March this year when sheriff’s deputies and state troopers raided Smith’s mobile home.

The officers said they found an active meth lab and arrested Biby and Smith. Biby was trying to pour “a large quantity” of what appeared to be methamphetamine down a sink when she was arrested, according to court documents.

The documents say investigators found meth-making supplies in 38-year-old Walter R. Burrell’s car, which was parked outside Smith’s home, and he also was arrested. Smith and Burrell are scheduled for trial July 24.

Newspaper records show Biby was arrested in a two-state drug roundup in 1997 that resulted in a shootout at a suspected Bonner County, Idaho, drug house about 25 miles southwest of Sandpoint. Biby and another woman were inside the house when two men outside the house opened fire on officers. Three bullets hit one of the officers’ protective shields, and the officers returned fire. No one was hurt. One of the male suspects surrendered immediately; the other fled and surrendered when he was tracked down.