When Devarus Oshay Bethea was last released in 2020, it was the third time in 10 years he’d been sent to state prison, every time on drug charges. He was 33.
He’s now 37. On Friday, Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols sentenced him to 14 years in prison, by far his longest sentence yet, with an additional five years he gets to serve concurrently. Bethea pleaded to trafficking fentanyl, a first-degree felony, and unlawful use of a communication device, a third-degree felony. He could have faced 35 years in prison and $100,000 fine. The fine was waived.
Bethea was among the 12 local residents arrested in the Flagler County Sheriff’s “Operation Silent Night” last December, which Sheriff Rick Staly announced days before Christmas. Bethea has been at the county jail since, on $202,500 bond. That time–190 days–will be credited to his prison sentence, and with “gain” time, or earlier release for good behavior, he could be out in 12 years, in time for his 50th birthday.
Flagler County Sheriff’s detectives had set up a sting operation in February 2024, using a confidential source. Bethea agreed to meet with the source, not knowing who he was meeting, and sell 14 grams of what turned out to be fentanyl, a substantial amount of the lethal drug. The transaction was captured on audio and video recording equipment. He was arrested at a house at Laramle Drive in Palm Coast.
In late April he sent a remorseful letter to Nichols, when he was under the impression Assistant State Attorney Jason Lewis was offering 10 years in prison. Invoking his responsibility to his 4-year-old daughter, trying his hand at a lesson in Latin and making an analogy with Michelangelo’s David, he asked the judge to let him serve five, and five on probation.
“I am writing this letter to you today from a place of uncertainty, fear and a highly rational sense of impending heartache for, most importantly, my daughter and myself,” Bethea wrote. “The word ‘remorse’ comes from the expression ‘remorseus conscientiae,’ or torment of the conscience. If I could find the means to measure the level or severity of such a term, I’d find it difficult to obtain results in this metaphysical universe made up of infinite numbers.”
He wrote the judge that the level of immaturity that had last landed him in prison in 2019 had “dissipated” but for a time when he could not provide for his family, when he “ I reverted back to old ways I once knew out of desperation.” In fact, his ways had never quite stopped: he was arrested in 2021 and sentenced to county jail for habitually driving on a revoked license, was charged with battery the same year (the charge was dropped), pleaded to felony battery the following year and spent almost a year in jail after being charged with aggravated battery, aggravated assault and felony child abuse when he assaulted the mother of his then-2-year-old child while she held the little girl, and while in jail, he violated his no-contact order by contacting the mother.
Lewis does not let that history go when he’s arguing for prison time before a judge. He lays it out, detail by detail.
“The statue of David required more than a single ball of clay and a day’s work, and even as flawless as he was set out to be, he still has his imperfections,” Bethea went on in his letter to the judge, saying how he’d been working on his GED to get a CDL license and “build a future for our family.”
He added: “I don’t want to see my daughter grow up through monthly visitations, to miss the special moments and milestones. A father’s role in a child’s life is crucial. I want to use the rest of my days setting a proper example for her and give her the life she deserves, a life better than my own.” His daughter will be at least 16 if he is released with gain time, and an adult if he serves out his full term.
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