SKOWHEGAN — Twenty-one-year-old Joshua Lieberman admits he has made some big mistakes. His role in a 2008 credit union robbery in Madison was one of them, he said Monday.

Attempting to take out a loan from a branch of the same institution last week to pay restitution for the robbery was another.

But the former Good Will-Hinckley student who spent much of his early years in foster care, said going into the Skowhegan branch of the Franklin Somerset Federal Credit Union could send him back to prison for seven years.

“I don’t want to be hung for an honest mistake,” Lieberman said Monday. “Everybody makes mistakes. I’ve been clean for six months, worked in a full-time job, getting married, a child on the way — just trying to do what I’ve got to do.

“I didn’t realize it was a Franklin Somerset. Why would I go in there on purpose?”

Lieberman currently is under house arrest awaiting a court hearing Wednesday morning on bail and probation violations. His probation from the robbery conviction stipulated that he not return to the credit union.

Lieberman drove the getaway car in the Madison robbery. He was arrested last week after one of the tellers at the Skowhegan branch recognized him.

He said his previous probation violations for testing positive for marijuana also could mean “strike three” for him. He said he uses marijuana to ease the anxiety of being bipolar and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from witnessing domestic violence against his mother when he was a child.

“I have been looking at getting my medical card (for medicinal marijuana) but that’s $300 just to go in and see them,” he said. “I can barely afford to do anything, let alone go in there.”

He said he admitted to having smoked marijuana to his probation officers.

“I never hid it; I always told them when I did something wrong, just trying to work with them,” he said. “District attorney Evert Fowle said I don’t get it — I get it.”

Lieberman’s mother, Dawn Steward, a licensed practical nurse, said she knows her son has some problems but hopes the courts will give him one more chance.

“He is a very good young man,” Steward, 40, said Monday. “I’m hoping that the community and the court system are going to allow him to prove himself. It was an honest mistake.”

Doug Harlow — 474-9534

dharlow@centralmaine.com

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