Criminal Law Amok In JeffCO Sentence for Truck Driver

A truck driver in Colorado was recently sentenced to 110 years in prison for a crime that left four people dead.  What’s unique is that that lengthy sentence was imposed for a crime was undisputedly an accident.  The young truck driver, Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, lost control of his truck while descending from the mountains into the Denver metro area on I-70.  He was not drinking, he was not racing, he was not road-raging.  His brakes failed, and he failed to mitigate the extraordinary risk to the public by using one of the runaway truck ramps that are available on I-70.   The jury agreed with the prosecution that he had acted recklessly, and the results of that reckless driving were tragic.   But people die in car accidents all the time, often without any criminal charges being filed.  Was this case so different as to warrant a 110 year prison sentence that guarantees Mr. Aguilera-Mederos will die in prison? 

The criminal defense lawyer could do nothing to prevent the 110 year sentence, and neither could the criminal court judge, Bruce Jones.  The sentence was mandatory once the jury convicted the defendant.  Surely the jury had no idea what the sentence would be when they convicted—that information is never conveyed to the jury, whose sole job it is to decide guilt or innocence, under Colorado law.  This outcome was controlled entirely by the prosecution, Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office, led by Alexis King.  By piling on numerous charges, for nearly every possible way of characterizing his reckless driving, against every possible victim, the DA created an immense amount of leverage over the defendant.  Convictions for the main charges, under Colorado law, would require sentences that would run consecutively to one another.   For essentially one reckless episode, the DA was able to create, with the legislature’s help, a great multiplier effect that doomed Mr. Aguilera-Mederos to die in prison.   The judge made it clear at sentencing that if he had had any discretion, he would never have imposed this sentence.

Amid the post-sentencing clamor, Jefferson County DA Alexis King made a statement trying to justify her office’s handling of the case. Note it was her predecessor, Pete Weir, who had originally filed the extravagant charges, but Ms. King herself passed the buck. She announced that the case outcome was mandated by the legislature, and that it reflected the jury’s judgment about the case.  This shocking deflection ignores the critical role that a prosecutor has in deciding what charges to file.  It is undisputed that a prosecutor’s job is to seek justice, and any criminal lawyer knows that in complex situations like the car accident at hand, there are a nearly infinite number of ways to charge (and not charge) crimes.  At the lenient end of the spectrum, there are charges like reckless driving punishable by up to three months in jail, and careless driving resulting in death, for which the maximum punishment is one year in jail.   At the more serious end are charges like first degree felony assault, attempted first degree assault, and vehicular homicide, which is where lengthier punishments come into play.  And by charging these serious offenses for every person that wound up involved in the crash, the prosecution guaranteed that the mandatory-consecutive sentencing requirements would play an outsized role.

Nothing about this situation required that Pete Weir or Alexis King charge the way they did.  I think mandatory sentencing provisions, and consecutive requirements are usually problematic,  but one can understand how they might sensibly work when there are just a couple charges, and those charges are for conduct at the heart of what the laws are trying to prevent.  But here is a clear case of overcharging. There is no way that Ms. King or Mr. Weir could credibly say that the legislature had envisioned use of these heavy-handed charges, with their mandatory sentences and mandatory-consecutive requirements, to be used for a massive car accident without any alcohol or drug impairment, without any intent on the part of the driver.  The result is a tragic absurdity, and the only person who could have stopped it was a reasonable DA.   Mr. Weir was not reasonable in his initial charging decisions, and Ms. King was presented with an opportunity to fix Mr. Weir’s mistake when she took office.  She declined to do so.

The heart of the issue here is prosecutorial discretion.  Ethics require a DA to seek justice, whatever that might look like.  Reasonable minds can differ widely on the best outcome in a case, that is understood.  But the 110 year sentence here is supported by extraordinarily few people, and seems to be far outside the bounds of what reasonable minds can agree on.  And though the legislature can be blamed for giving unreasonable prosecutors the tools to do this kind of damage, the reality is that legislatures write laws for typical cases, and this was an atypical case in how many named victims existed, and how that would multiply the effect of the mandatory sentencing requirements.  Similarly, legislatures write criminal laws (like attempted first degree assault, and all of its varieties) somewhat broadly, and can not possibly specify with detail exactly how they can or can’t be applied in the future.  Inevitably, the system depends on the discretion of the prosecutor to wisely choose what charges are reasonable and appropriate in any case.   And the charging decisions here, initiated by Pete Weir and ratified by Alexis King, dictated this 110 year outcome.  They were supposed to be the failsafe in the system, but their exercise of discretion appears to have been the failure itself.

One dirty secret in criminal law is that many prosecutors know that their initial charging decisions would produce outcomes that even they do not think are appropriate, and that a judge would not approve of.  But they do this anyway, because they know the leverage from overcharging is likely to force a defendant to take a plea offer, rather than go to trial and risk mandatory sentencing outcomes like Mr. Aguilera-Mederos just suffered. It gives prosecutors immense leverage, and takes power away from criminal defense lawyers, defendants, and judges.  I do not know what plea offers were made to Mr. Aguilera-Mederos, but it’s easy to imagine that if the prosecution held the 110 year ace of spades in its hand, it would not feel necessary to meet the defense even halfway, figuratively speaking.   That then is the real problem with mandatory and consecutive sentencing provisions: they destroy checks and balances, they give outsized power to a single person in the system, the DA, to dictate outcomes.

 Ms. King was elected in part to reform an office that was known in the Denver metro criminal defense bar to be particularly aggressive and unreasonable. I couldn’t vote for her, but I supported her based on community sentiment. And she has been making some strides.  One hopes that she issued her initial statement simply to buy time, while perhaps her office evaluates the national uproar (one petition for clemency for Mr. Aguilera-Mederos has already received nearly 4 million signatures) and reevaluates the case.  In her initial statement, Ms. King patted herself on the back for having asked only for the minimum sentence of 110 years, as if that minimum were not dictated by her office’s charging decisions.  She’ll have to do better than that to fix this mistake.  There are still some legal paths to a more reasonable outcome, one that protects the community and acknowledges the loss of the victims and their families, without creating an absurd, disproportionate sentence. 

Ms. King has always had the power to do better in this case, but she has to take that responsibility seriously, and take action now, even it means acknowledging a past mistake.  The entire justice system is about accountability for past mistakes.  Everybody makes mistakes, but mistakes do not need to be permanent, irreversible. As a Denver criminal defense lawyer, I do not believe that is true for my defendant clients, nor do I think it has to be the case for a prosecutor.  I remain hopeful that Ms. King will join in efforts to correct this 110 year mistake.