BANGOR – A woman was sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court to one year and a day in prison for smuggling OxyContin across the border.

Marie S. Paul, 26, of Perry also was sentenced to three years of supervised release after her prison term and ordered to pay a $500 fine.

“[This] case reflects how endemic to Washington County the OxyContin epidemic is when it reaches a defendant like this one,” U.S. District Judge John Woodcock said of Paul, whose parents, friends and family sat behind her in the courtroom. “It reflects how widespread and lethal drugs can be.”

Paul, a Passamaquoddy, pleaded guilty in April to smuggling 20 OxyContin pills in her vagina across the Canadian border at Calais on March 31, 2005. Since then, she has been held at the Piscataquis County Jail while awaiting sentencing. That time will be applied to the sentence handed down Monday.

She faced up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million. Under the federal sentencing guidelines, her recommended sentence was 12 to 18 months in prison. She had no prior convictions.

Woodcock said he sentenced Paul to the 12 months her attorney, Benjamin Smith of Augusta, recommended rather than the 14 months the U.S. Attorney’s Office recommended so she could return to her four-year-old daughter as quickly as possible. The girl is living with her maternal grandparents.

“I apologize for my actions,” Paul said as she wept. “I’d like the chance to prove to you and the court that I have changed. I want to put this behind me so that I can raise my daughter and be a mother she can look up to and be proud of. I’m just really sorry.”

Woodcock said that in imposing a sentence, he had to consider not only Paul’s individual crime and circumstances, but also the message her sentence would send to the community.

“What I wish is that the young people in your tribe and Washington County could be here to witness what is the inevitable consequence to the decision to take illegal drugs,” the judge said. “What begins with a thrill ends in a cell.”