Prosecution, family against early release for Indiana Township woman who killed FBI agent

The U.S. Attorney’s Office, as well as the national organization that represents active and retired FBI special agents, say that the Indiana Township woman who shot and killed an FBI agent in 2008 should not be released early from prison.

Christina Korbe filed a request for compassionate release in U.S. District Court earlier this month, writing that she was recovering from covid-19 and that her children were being cared for by her 75-year-old father-in-law.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Troy Rivetti said in a response filed Monday that none of the reasons provided by Korbe, who has twice before sought a reduction in her prison term, justify her release before the expiration of her sentence in May 2022.

Korbe pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter for killing Special Agent Samuel Hicks on the morning of Nov. 19, 2008, as he and a team of law enforcement officers arrived at her Woods Run Road home in Indiana Township to arrest her husband, Robert Korbe, on drug charges.

Hicks was shot in the chest. He was 33 years old.

Christina Korbe fired the shot from the upstairs of the home. She pleaded guilty in 2011 and was ordered to serve 15 years and 10 months in federal prison.

On Aug. 20, she filed a motion seeking a reduced prison sentence for “extraordinary and compelling reasons” under the “First Step Act.” Included among her reasons for seeking release was contracting covid-19.

“Ms. Korbe clearly is not a danger to the community,” her attorney wrote. “Moreover, the fact that she has survived the virus once, and persists in her desire to remain healthy despite the myriad health challenges noted in her medical records, there are extraordinary and compelling reasons to allow her to be released at this time.”

However, in its response, the prosecution said that none of the reasons provided in her motion meet the criteria for “extraordinary and compelling.”

Further, the filing said that Korbe’s claim that she has contracted and recovered from the virus is contradicted by her medical records.

On April 10, the government wrote, “exactly when Korbe claims she was suffering from severe covid-19 symptoms,” she made “no mention of coughing, headaches or the other covid-19 symptoms she now claims.

“In fact, she indicated that she felt ‘better’ after feeling somewhat tired and that there were ‘no other concerns,’ ” Rivetti wrote.

As of Aug. 30, the response said, no inmates and only one staff member at the Federal Correctional Institution at Danbury, where Korbe is being housed, had an active positive covid-19 case.

Rivetti also said in his filing that Korbe did not mention covid-19 in her initial request with the Bureau of Prisons for early release, meaning that she did not exhaust her administrative appeals, which is required before the issue can be considered by the court.

Her crime, Rivetti wrote, is an “extraordinarily serious” one.

“Every day, law enforcement officers must put themselves in harm’s way by carrying out hazardous duties, such as breaching a door and entering a potentially hostile location,” the filing said. “Korbe’s shooting of Special Agent Hicks was therefore an assault not only on law enforcement, but on society as a whole and its interest in public safety.”

In addition to the government’s filing on Monday, Agent Hicks’ wife, mother and sister filed letters with the court asking U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan to deny Korbe’s request.

Brooke Hicks, Hicks’ wife, wrote that Korbe’s release date of May 22, 2022, is forever etched in her mind. Every morning when she wakes up missing her husband, she wrote, she takes “solace in the fact that Ms. Korbe is still in prison serving her agreed-upon sentence of 15 years and 10 months.”

“I have been preparing myself for the day she will be released, and have been working towards finding forgiveness and compassion and hoping that she has found it in her heart to change the type of person she was when she entered prison 10 years ago,” Brooke Hicks wrote. “She will leave prison and enter the world as a mother, having missed out on many years with her children, and while I can only imagine how hard that is for her, I know what it is like to raise a child without a father, because I have been doing that for many years.”

Hicks went on to describe how her son was just 2 years old when his father was killed, and that she has had to fill the role of both mother and father for him.

In addition to the government and family response, the FBI Agents Association, which represents 14,000 active and retired special agents, said in a statement issued Friday that it, too, opposes the motion filed earlier this month by Korbe.

“It is important that the tragic facts surrounding the killing of Special Agent Hicks are not forgotten,” said President Brian O’Hare.

In his statement, he wrote that Korbe’s 15-year prison sentence “pales in comparison to the consequences of her actions.

“Requiring Korbe to serve that sentence is necessary to honor the memory of Agent Hicks and to protect all other law enforcement officers who place themselves in harm’s way to protect the public,” he said.