CHEYENNE - A federal judge late last week sentenced a Rock Springs man to serve 20 years in prison in a drug case in which a teenage girl suffered brain damage after ingesting morphine.

Judge Clarence Brimmer on Friday sentenced Christopher Lee McInturff, 20, to prison on his guilty plea to one count of distributing morphine to a person under the age 18 resulting in serious bodily injury.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Phillips told Brimmer that the victim, a 17-year-old girl, suffered brain damage from lack of oxygen after she ingested the drug last March. He said she has trouble speaking, cannot see well and will require 24-hour care for the foreseeable future.

"This 17-year-old girl will suffer her entire life," Phillips said.

McInturff apologized to the victim and her family. No one from the victim's family appeared in court.

"I hope everything continues to get better for her as much as possible," McInturff said. "And I hope that they can forgive me for all this."

McInturff was first charged in state court and law enforcement records filed there state that the girl was staying at McInturff's house when she ingested the drug.

An affidavit filed by an officer with the Rock Springs Police Department in Sweetwater County Circuit Court states that McInturff and his mother brought the unconscious girl to the Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County on the morning of March 12, 2008. A nurse later told investigators that McInturff told her he had given the girl half of a 200 milligram morphine tablet the night before.

According to the affidavit, McInturff told the nurse that he had heard the girl "gurgling" at about 3 a.m. but thought nothing of it. She was unresponsive when he went to wake her at about 6 a.m.

Defense attorney James Barrett told Brimmer that he didn't believe the case required a lot of sophisticated discussion.

"What happened here was a tragic, stupid thing that fortunately doesn't happen a lot with the teenage and young-adult population," Barrett said. "But unfortunately, it does happen."

Brimmer said that the byword in the drug culture is that there's not much wrong with marijuana. He said that McInturff had a previous conviction for marijuana sales.

"Look where it led," Brimmer said. "That's the tragic part of this whole thing."

Brimmer noted that McInturff was going to jail, which he said is never pleasant. "But he's still able to read and exercise and do all the things that normal people can do."

The judge noted that the victim won't be able to do those things for the rest of her life.

Brimmer said he would have preferred to impose a 10-year sentence on McInturff, but said federal sentencing guidelines left him no choice but to impose the 20-year sentence.

"I don't think that a 20-year sentence is necessary either to teach you what you shouldn't have done, or to teach the public. I think they all know," Brimmer said.