Photo: BROWARD SHERIFF OFFICE AND DENVER POLICE / Courtesy
For: EFE
Thursday, November 14
Colorado prosecutor's office will ask to reduce the sentence of 110 years to Latino truck driver
MIAMI – The Attorney’s Office for the First Judicial District of Colorado will ask the court next Monday to reduce to less than half the sentence of 110 years of a Hispanic trucker who in an accident left four dead , a case that has mobilized public opinion across the country.
As published by The Denver Channel this Friday, the reconsideration hearing of the sentence is scheduled for next Monday at 11. 00 in the morning and in it The State Attorney’s Office for the First Judicial District will ask that reduce the sentence imposed on the Cuban trucker Rogel Aguilera Mederos to between 20 Y 30 years in prison.
Prosecutor Alexis King, the same one who made the initial accusations, was the one who presented a motion to hold the sentence review hearing.
According to The Denver Channel, more than 4.8 million people have signed a petition on Change.org calling for Aguilera-Mederos’ sentence to be commuted or pardoned.
The petition argues that the accident, in which four incinerated people died when their Aguilera Mederos truck hit, was a tragedy but that the sentence is unfair .
On social media, posts also ask truckers boycotting Colorado until Aguilera Mederos is freed or the law is changed.
Public figures such as Kim Kardashian joined this week the numerous efforts underway to reduce the sentence of the young Cuban of 26 years.
After a jury found him guilty in October, last 13 December Aguilera Mederos received a sentence of 110 years in prison for having caused a road accident on 25 April 2019 west of Denver in which four people died and dozens more were injured.
To the truck driving the Cuban loaded with merchandise, his brakes overheated and he could not stop it while going down a steep hill and hit several crowded vehicles at high speed due to a previous accident.
During sentencing , Judge A. Bruce Jones said his hands were tied due to mandatory minimum laws in the state.
Marches and mobilizations almost Dates to the local Capitol in Denver began to show results when state Sen. Julie Gonzales (Democrat) announced last Tuesday that she will work with attorney and former legislator Joe Salazar at a bill, to be presented in 2022, to modify the sentencing laws in Colorado, thus benefiting the Latino.
While, relatives of the accident victims of 2019, including Valerie Robertson Young (who was at the scene but escaped unharmed) and Gage Evans, widow of Bill Bailey (who died in the accident), started their own campaign so that the sentence is not modified .
Speaking to the Denver media when announcing the initiative, Robertson Young affirmed that the sentence is fair because “four men were burned alive.”
“I saw them and it is something that I will never forget, “he said.
For his part, Leonard Martínez, one of Aguilera Mederos’ lawyers, told press that u na sentence of 110 years is “excessive” because in similar incidents (truck drivers causing accidents with multiple deaths) such long sentences were not imposed, and because, contrary to As stated by the Prosecutor’s Office, Aguilera Mederos “never had the intention of causing an accident, much less that four people died.”
During an update on covid cases – 19 in Colorado, this week Governor Jared Polis confirmed that he received a request for clemency in this case.
“We just received your attorney’s request yesterday afternoon and my legal team is reviewing it at this time. We will make an announcement once a decision has been made, ”Polis told a journalist in Spanish.
It may interest you:
– Rogel Aguilera-Mederos: the wave of solidarity with the trucker Cuban who killed four people in an accident in the US and how to explain his sentence of 110 of years
– Colorado Governor reviews clemency request for Latino trucker sentenced to 110 years
– The controversial sentence of 110 years in prison for a young Cuban for causing the death of 4 people in an accident in the US