Brittney Griner Blames Sentence on Panicked Packing

"I could just visualize everything I worked so hard for just crumbling and going away," basketball star Brittney Griner says of her arrest in Russia in 2022. Vape cartridges containing cannabis oil, which is an illegal substance in Russia, had been found in her luggage at an airport. In an interview airing Wednesday night on ABC's 20/20, the WNBA star says she didn't intend to take the cartridges on the trip and blames hurried packing. Griner, 33, says she overslept on the morning of her departure from the US, per ABC News.

That led to her packing "in panic mode," Griner says, "just throwing all my stuff in there and zipping it up and saying, 'OK, I'm ready.'" When Russian security asked to go through her bag, Griner says, the mistake hit her. She pleaded guilty, received a nine-year sentence, and was released in a US-Russia swap months later. "You know there are those who say, 'Come on. How did you not know that you had cartridges in your luggage?'" interviewer Robin Roberts asks. "It's just so easy to have a mental lapse," Griner answers. The two-time Olympic gold medalist also details the experience in a memoir, Coming Home, to be released on May 7.