Tammy Copas Sentenced to 121 Months in Prison for Armed Robberies

GREENEVILLE, TN—Tammy Copas, 40, of Johnson City, Tennessee, was sentenced to serve a total of 121 months in prison by the Honorable J. Ronnie Greer, U.S. District Judge. Upon release from prison she will be subject to three years’ supervised release under the supervision of the U.S. Probation Office.

Copas pleaded guilty on May 14, 2012, to robberies by force of the Discount Tobacco Outlet store in Elizabethton and the La Perla restaurant in Johnson City, both of which occurred in January 2012. Copas also pleaded guilty to brandishing a firearm in the commission of the La Perla robbery. She was sentenced to 37 months for each of the robberies, with the terms to run concurrently and 84 months for brandishing the firearm, to run consecutively to the robbery sentences. Federal law mandates a seven-year minimum mandatory sentence for brandishing a firearm in the commission of a violent offense.

Law enforcement agencies participating in the joint investigation which led to indictment and subsequent conviction of Lopez included the Johnson City Police Department, Elizabethton Police Department, and Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney J. Gregory Bowman represented the United States.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a comprehensive national strategy that creates local partnerships with law enforcement agencies to effectively enforce existing gun laws. It provides more options to prosecutors, allowing them to utilize local, state, and federal laws to ensure that criminals who commit gun crime face tough sentences. PSN gives each federal district the flexibility it needs to focus on individual challenges that a specific community faces.