Officer Fined for Battering Handcuffed Patient

No special treatment, there

It took a Washington County jury about 45 minutes on Tuesday to find a former Bartlesville police officer guilty of assault.

The jury summarily sentenced 45-year-old Sonya Jean Worthington to no jail time but gave her a $1,000 fine for one count of misdemeanor assault and battery. The maximum jail time for the crime could have been 90 days, according to instructions given to the jury following the trial.

District Attorney Kevin Buchanan had called the case "straightforward" Monday in the first day of testimony. Worthington, along with 42-year-old Stacy Charles Neafus, was accused of assaulting a patient at Jane Phillips Medical Center last year.