The sentence, pretty notorious now, was long enough to shock a lot of people out of complacency. 110 years. Not life. Not four lifetimes. 110 years. That was the sentence imposed upon Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, a truck driver who drove far too fast until he came upon traffic stopped in front of him, whereupon his brakes failed. He could have driven off the highway but made the wrong call. It ended in a fiery crash and four entirely innocent people dead.
For this, the defendant was sentenced to 110 years, with even the judge stating that it was not the sentence he would want to impose. But given the charges, given that he went to trial and was convicted, given the mandatory nature of the sentencing law, both in terms of years and that the sentences be consecutive rather than concurrent, there was no other option,
The case has generated editorials calling on Colorado Gov. Jared Polis to commute the sentence. There is a petition with almost 5 million signatures calling for time served or clemency. Kim Kardashian has taken up the cause, prompting many to confuse the gross excess with innocence, this being characterized as merely a tragic accident and not a crime at all.
Activists have attacked one of the prosecutors, Deputy District Attorney Kayla Wildeman, a two-year lawyer who was so taken with her win that she posted a picture of her trial “trophy” on Facebook.
What came out of the case was a piece for nearly everything “wrong” about the system, from evil prosecutors overcharging to the outrage of the trial tax to the impropriety of harsh mandatory minimums to the general outrageous excess of the system. There was a hook here for everything that’s wrong, and this case became a cause célèbre.
Is that a good thing? It could be, and many will try to make the most of the public interest in this case to seek change. But then, it may also turn out that many will see little more than a one case problem, one poor guy got 110 years, which was wrong. The District Attorney, feeling the heat, is trying to cool things down.
Alexis King, the district attorney whose office prosecuted Mr. Aguilera-Mederos, filed the request to reconsider the sentence on Friday. Her office announced the move on Tuesday.
The judge has some flexibility to adjust the sentence, but only after some time has been served.
In Colorado, the sentence for a person convicted of a violent crime can’t be changed until 119 days after the defendant enters prison. James Colgan, a lawyer for Mr. Aguilera-Mederos, said the judge had ordered all the parties in the case to be in court on Monday to discuss how to change the sentence under these conditions.
Gov. Polis can, of course, grant clemency and reduce the sentence, though reduce it to what will remain a minefield for him to navigate if he wants to exercise his power without it blowing up on him.
Mr. Polis, the governor, said at a news conference on Tuesday that his office received the clemency application on Monday night. “When we have a decision, we will announce it,” Mr. Polis said in Spanish, according to a local news channel, KDVR-TV.
But these solutions might address the 110-year sentence imposed on Aguilera-Mederos, which is how criminal cases get fixed, one at a time, but leave behind the series of problems that ended in this sentence.
Was Kayla Wildeman the problem? Was it the use of gross over-charging to try to force Aguilera-Mederos to take a plea, which he refused to do, the problem? Was it the simplistic fix of mandatory minimums, once considered the bludgeon to put an end to crime, the problem? All of these things? None of these things?
There is a strong likelihood that the only two things to come out of this case will be the demonization of Wildeman and a reduction in sentence. While Wildeman’s carceral enthusiasm may have reflected the dreaded callousness and smugness that reminds us why prosecutorial discretion can never be the safety valve for an unduly harsh system, she’s just one baby prosecutor. Vilifying her may hurt her, but changes nothing. And she’s not really much different than any other baby lawyer, filled with her power, importance and righteousness, just on the other team that believes they serve “justice” too.
But for those whose agenda is to elect progressive prosecutors so they can wield unfettered discretion just like her, Wildeman makes the perfect target.
That the defendant chose to go to trial, to reject a plea offer and roll the dice, is an indictment of the “trial tax” in the sense of the absurd difference in time he was then facing, now sentenced to, for exercising his right to trial. But it’s also a reminder why the safety valve of plea bargaining can’t be eliminated.
Why he went to trial is unclear, as there really wasn’t a factual dispute in the case and he knew, or at least should have known, what would happen when he was convicted. There is a mindset of “I did wrong, but not that wrong,” that can push a defendant to take dubious risks. There’s something to admire about taking such a position, but the end result is almost always disaster.
But for those whose agenda is to eliminate plea bargaining, the “trial tax” in this case makes it ripe to attack.* Then again, four people were killed here, no small deal, and while he may have intended them no harm, he made choices that ended in their deaths. Had he been sentenced to 25 years rather than 110, would there be any outcry about the trial tax? Would there be public outrage at its excess? Even a sentence of 25 years for the bad choice of speeding and deciding not to take a runaway ramp is incredibly harsh, but would people have instead demanded “justice” for the four lives lost?
And then there’s the mandatory minimum issue, which doesn’t seem to be sexy enough to catch much general interest, even though it’s the most significant systemic fault that precluded the judge from exercising his discretion to impose an appropriate sentence.
Will the sentence of Rogel Aguilera-Mederos end up serving any greater purpose or end up being served? I suspect it will be substantially reduced by one of the available mechanisms, and the millions of eyeballs watching will immediately shift to some new outrage to scream at. That one absurdly harsh sentence for one defendant was changed because of this is no small thing. This is what we do, save one life at a time. But will any lessons be learned from this case so it doesn’t happen to others?
- At Reason, Billy Binion writes:
“My administration contemplated a significantly different outcome in this case and initiated plea negotiations but Mr. Aguilera-Mederos declined to consider anything other than a traffic ticket,” she told me last week.
King’s statement may not shock the conscience at first glance: Plea deals are a fixture of the U.S. criminal legal system. But her remarks hit at something deeper. By her own admission, Aguilera-Mederos was sentenced to die in prison not because the state felt that was the fair and just punishment, but because he insisted on exercising his constitutional right to trial.
The defendant was charged and sentenced in accordance with law. Is this the “admission” claimed or the law being executed as the legislature intended?
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The short answer? No. This is one of the problems of the legal system that has been present for a long time. Mandatory minimums were a fix to a rare problem…that promptly caused more problems. Which is why work-arounds exist. Unfortunately, it will take a more exciting case (involving a popular figure and a truly outrageous sentence) to get any traction for a more permanent solution.
Is anyone popular enough to get people to focus long and hard enough to move below the surface?
Jussie Smollett getting the max of three years on all five counts, and sentenced to serve them consecutively? (Though some may channel Max Bialystock and think, “It’s too good”)
The Cato/Binion/Neily argument about the trial tax is shallow, simplistic and wrong. The prosecution didn’t charge him with unprovably harsh crimes to extort a plea, but the crimes with which he was convicted after a trial, and with the sentence it mandated be imposed. That he was offered an out and refused it doesn’t make the prosecution wrong, but just doing the job of executing the laws enacted by the legislature.
The crimes are too serious? The sentence too harsh? Putting aside the fact that those are value judgments as opposed to facts, what would be gained if there was no outlet to plead? Or is this just a matter of we want total discretion, just exercised the way we want it exercised rather than the way mean people want it exercised.
The outcome in this case is terrible, and would likely have been terrible under far less harsh laws as well. And if we changed the law to allow for reckless vehicular homicide to walk away with time served, there would be an outcry over letting people get away with murder.
As the deft was convicted after trial, it’s hard to argue that the prosecution did something wrong by charging and getting a conviction based on the conduct proven. If that’s outrageous (and it is), is it the prosecution’s fault or the legislature’s? When laws are executed as intended, we realize how awful the laws are, as if nobody really expected anybody to be sentence this harshly because that’s why we offer pleas. Except this time, the deft didn’t do what he was supposed to do. Who is wrong here?
The prosecutor and the legislature considering the prosecution didn’t want to impose such a severe sentence but brought charges they knew would result in such a sentence. The legislature caused the mess. The Defendant played his part too. Can everyone be wrong in some way in this series of unfortunate events? It feels lame choosing all of the above, but it also seems right.
Complicated systems are complicated, which is why there is both an element of truth in each of the problems raised, and yet “fixing” any one of the problems without recognizing how they will fit together and what the real consequences will be will almost certainly prove to be a disaster.
I don’t disagree at all that the system is enormously complicated, but it seems to me that one element that is ripe for change and perhaps less controversial and risky than others is the charging of discrete counts for non-discrete actions. There’s a huge difference between causing one accident that killed four, and causing four accidents that killed one each.
And how does that apply to the million other cases with different facts, or is this the only case with an issue?
When we go assigning random numbers of years to various offenses. 110 years for four deaths is as fair and just as anything. It makes as much sense as 20 or 50. There is no rational basis for the “bad conduct = time” equation to begin with.
Focus, Bruce. FOCUS.
SHG,
The Feds are screwed up when it comes to penalties and sentencing–I so admit. But, as this case demonstrates, 50 states have the power and will to write 50 laws on penalties and sentencing. There is no real fix to the 50-state penalty & sentence-o-rama.
Have a nice day.
Rich
Much of the argument focused on prosecutorial discretion and “doing justice” by not charging or seeking penalties that are unduly harsh. There are only a few hundred flaws with this approach, but it’s a lot easier than getting legislators to do something not entirely moronic.
“50-state penalty & Sentence-o-rama”
Nice one, Judge. (and Merry Christmas, my friend.)
Sounds like a …
And same to you! And, thanks.
What if there was a law passed that said that the sentence after trial could be no greater than, say, twice the sentence on the plea offer?
Would that result in lower sentences after trial or higher plea offers? What about mandatory mins? Would there be any incentive for prosecutors to charge a lesser up front to allow for greater flexibility or would they charge the highest count so they aren’t constrained on the back end and get the most leverage?
If I recall correctly, mandatory minimums came about because of cases where the sentences were so lenient that they created outrage. Here’s a case where the harshness of the sentence is also generated outrage. (Which it should.)
I don’t know what the long-term answer is, but am I crazy to think it needs to not come from a place of outrage, but rational thought, empathy, and balanced points of view?
But that requires nuanced thought, something that seems to be very rare these days.
A nitpick, but there’s a difference. The lenient sentences were hardly too lenient, but not nearly as harsh as people came to demand of the government against the people they hated. So they wanted to take away judicial discretion so judges would have no choice but to be Draconian. They just couldn’t be trusted to be as harsh as people wanted them to be.
Did the jury know the (potential?) penalty if they returned a guilty verdict? If not, should they have been told?
That’s not how law works. Perhaps it should be, but it’s not.
What was wrong with the prosecutor’s fb post? It’s not exactly a sunshine and rainbows job, so was she wrong to express some joy and happiness towards her colleague? She doesn’t mention the deft there at all. Seems like another attempt to batter someone for not feeling permanently miserable.
It’s not unusual for prosecutors to be given trophies of their big wins, but given the extreme of the sentence, it was a bit too tone-deaf for her to take it a step further and crow on FB.
The laws that the defendant was charged with violating and the corresponding sentences are promulgated by the duly elected legislature and signed into law by the governor. All of these are elected officers and the laws are meant to be an expression of the values of the citizens of that state. The prosecutor didn’t pull laws out of a hat to charge him with. She either presented the case to a grand jury or a judge to determine whether there was probable cause to bring charges. The guilty verdicts on many of those counts validates the propriety of bringing those charges. This wasn’t a case of overcharging. As to the complaints about the prosecutor knowing how long the potential sentence would be, well guess who else knew or should have known? Defense counsel. If the defendant didn’t make a knowing and intelligent decision to reject the plea deal, that’s between him and his lawyers. I saw a case in federal court where a woman rejected a very favorable deal in a drug conspiracy case, went to trial and got 10 years. The judge and defense counsel were practically begging her to take the deal on the morning of jury selection. She was adamant that she wasn’t doing time. She bet wrong. The trial decision belongs to the defendant. If they choose it and get a ton of years, it’s on them and no one else.