U.S. Governor of Colorado reduces truck driver’s sentence by 100 years Court News

Rogel Aguilera-Mederos ’petition garnered more than five million signatures, asking for pardon for the driver.

In the United States, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has shortened the 110-year sentence of a truck driver convicted of vehicle homicide and reduced the prison sentence to 10 years since prosecutors returned to court this week in a strange move to demand reassurance.

In a letter to 26-year-old Cuban truck driver Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos, the governor said the accident on a mountain highway that killed four drivers in April 2019 was a “tragic but unintentional act.”

The decision on Aguilera-Mederos’ sentence was in the midst of several year-end communis and pardons issued by Polis on Thursday.

The truck driver will be eligible for parole within five years, the governor said.

The move comes at the request of a prosecutor who had planned to reduce the sentence to 20 and 30 years for a judge to reconsider his sentence for January 13, and a trial has been scheduled for the day.

More than five million people have signed an online petition seeking the pardon of Aguilera-Mederos, a jury in October convicted of four vehicle killings and four people killed in 2019 for assaulting and driving a car bomb in a pile of explosives.

Aguilera-Mederos testified that he was transporting wood when his vehicle’s brakes failed when he was descending the steep slope of Rocky Mountain, Interstate 70. His truck crashed into vehicles that had been slowed down as a result of another accident, igniting a chain reaction and a fireball that consumed the vehicle and shattered parts of the highway.

The video of the scene showed cars and trucks engulfed in fire, with fire spread to the sky and wood scattered along the road.

Judge Bruce Jones ruled that the 110-year sentence was set to be a mandatory minimum period set by state law on Dec. 13, which was not his option.

The prosecutor argued that as Aguilera-Mederos’ truck was coming down from the mountains, it could have used an elusive interstate slope designed to stop vehicles that lost control of the brakes.

District Attorney Alexis King criticized Polis for saying that the governor had essentially shortened the circuit of a more deliberative judicial process that the prosecutor had begun in consultation with the families of the victims and the survivors.

“We are disappointed with the governor’s decision to act earlier,” King said in a statement, adding that the final decision on the fate of Aguilera-Mederos should be in the hands of a judge.

First District Attorney Alexis King asked the court to reduce Aguilera-Mederos’ sentence in a strange move by a prosecutor.[File: Helen H Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images]

King asked in court on Monday to reduce the sentence to 20 to 30 years, arguing that calm was needed in the absence of criminal intent.

Defense attorney James Colgan said King’s move was “missing.” “Two weeks ago, they (the prosecutors) were fine with spending my client 110 years until there was a public outcry,” he told Reuters after Monday’s hearing. “Everything is political.”

The accident killed 24-year-old Miguel Angel Lamas Arellano, 67-year-old William Bailey, 61-year-old Doyle Harrison and 69-year-old Stanley Politano.

The governor said the case would spur debate over criminal laws, but that future changes would not help Aguilera-Mederos.

Polis said the driver was “not guilty” but that the 110-year sentence was “disproportionate” compared to “intentional, premeditated or violent crimes”.

“There is a need to resolve this unjust punishment and restore confidence in the uniformity and fairness of our criminal justice system, and as a result, I have chosen to change your sentence now,” Polis wrote.