A 27-year-old New York woman received an unusually tough sentence of six months in jail at her sentencing yesterday for spray-painting graffiti in the Back Bay and at the MBTA’s Orient Heights rail yard in East Boston.
Graffiti artist Danielle Bremner was also ordered to serve five years of probation that will be supervised by New York officials; to stay out of Boston during that period; to undergo a mental health evaluation and treatment, if necessary; and to pay restitution, with the amount to be determined at a Dec. 15 hearing.
Bremner pleaded guilty last week in Boston Municipal Court to 13 charges of tagging property for spray-painting her moniker, Utah, in alleys behind Newbury Street and on trains at the rail yard, in 2006 and 2007, prosecutors said.
Bremner had received a 2006 continuance without a finding on eight additional graffiti-related charges in Brighton District Court, prosecutors said. She was also recently released from Rikers Island after serving most of a six-month sentence for graffiti charges in New York.
Prosecutors have said the jail sentence, while unusual for such a case, was just. The sentence was warranted “in light of the extensive damage to personal and public property, the defendant’s extensive history with property damage, and her extensive involvement with the criminal justice system in this jurisdiction and others,’’ said Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley’s spokesman, Jake Wark.
“In most cases, we seek financial restitution as a deterrent to both the defendant and other potential defendants. In this case, however, the nature and extent of the damage was so egregious it required more than a simple financial resolution,’’ Wark said.
William Keefe, Bremner’s lawyer, said the sentence imposed by Judge Thomas Horgan was no surprise. He said that at one point during the case, the prosecution had asked for a two-year jail sentence, while he constantly advocated probation.
Keefe said Bremner had braced herself to spend time in jail. “She’s a very decent kid who has been working in the fashion industry and trying to get her bachelor’s degree and comes from a very good family,’’ he said.
A graffiti revolutionary just can’t get a break these days, even if his art does hang in Washington’s National Portrait Gallery.
Returning to Boston to face two graffiti charges, the Los Angeles-based artist who created the controversial “Hope” poster of Barack Obama may be facing a deluge of new charges.
Prosecutor Patrick Driscoll Jr. said Bremner is to blame for “tens of thousands of dollars” in damages to Back Bay buildings, much of which was documented in photographs by Swanson and presented to Judge Annette Forde.
