‘He’ll Serve His Time’: Colorado Gov. Defends Commuting Sentence for Trucker Given 110 Years in Deadly Crash
Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) defended his decision on CNN Friday to commute the sentence of a semi-truck driver who killed four people in 2019 when his brakes failed and he smashed into a dozen vehicles on a crowded highway.
Rogel Aguilera-Mederos was driving on Intestate 70 near Lakewood, Colorado, on April 25, 2019 when his brakes failed and he eventually crashed into other motorists. Prosecutors argued at trial that the driver made no attempt to avoid the deadly collision.
A judge sentenced Aguilera-Mederos to 110 years behind bars on Dec. 16 in a decision he admitted he did not want to have to make. Jefferson County District Judge Bruce Jones cited mandatory sentencing laws for the sentence.
The sentence quickly prompted national outrage, and Polis commuted it to 10 years on Thursday.
The governor joined The Situation Room Friday evening to talk about his decision to intervene with guest host Poppy Harlow.
Harlow played a clip for Polis in which a woman who was in the crash named Valerie Robertson Young expressed outrage over Aguilera-Mederos’ actions. Harlow noted the woman had also asked Polis not to commute the sentence.
Polis told Harlow he understood Young’s anger, but said he believed Aguilera-Mederos’ sentence was inconsistent when compared to those from similar incidents.
“Well, he certainly deserves to be punished for the errors he made, and… you know when you make errors on the road, you don’t, it’s not out of malicious intent,” Polis said. “But nevertheless, we do punish that. And when you look at how others who have been involved with inadvertent, vehicular homicide, reckless driving. This sentence of 10 years is more consistent with that than 110 years, which is frankly more than you get if you go in and deliberately try to murder somebody and succeed.”
Polis noted that the judge had also expressed he felt the 110 year sentence for Aguilera-Mederos was too strong, and explained why he commuted it.
Polis said:
What we did in our office is we went through and said, “Let’s look at these reckless driving and deaths that occur and how do we, in our state, punish them.” And we really saw that ten years was really that 10 years was in that range, really towards the higher end of that range. We saw sentences from all the way from zero deferred sentence up to 10, 12 and even 15 years. So, we went with one on the higher range. He’ll serve his time, pay his debt to society and I hope that he tries to heal with the families of the people that were effected.
Polis concluded he hopes the attention surrounding the case leads to a renewed interest in reforming mandatory sentencing laws.
Watch above, via CNN.
