Prosecutors have urgently requested that the high-profile case of the Colorado truck driver who was sentenced to 110 years in prison last week be reviewed. Then-23-year-old Rogel Aguilera-Mederos lost control of his tractor trailer when its brakes failed on Interstate 70 in 2019. He was convicted of over 27 offenses after four people died in the fiery pileup but protests have erupted since then, with supporters urging clemency and truckers vowing to boycott the state.
In a dizzying turn of events, Jefferson County District Attorney Alexis King filed a motion on Tuesday to expedite a hearing for Aguilera-Mederos’ sentence to be reconsidered.
King stressed the importance of urgency on the case was “so that the named victims in the case, as well as their families, have an opportunity to be heard by the trial court… We have spoken to the living victims and the families of the deceased victims, and it is their specific desire to be heard on this modification, in this forum, as quickly as possible.”
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King said her office would like a hearing no later than Dec. 24 or Dec. 27.
She filed an initial motion for the sentence to be reconsidered on Dec. 17, according to a press release from her office. She acknowledged Colorado’s rules in regards to sentencing, but she also countered that the law allows for exceptions.
“As Colorado law required the imposition of the sentence in this case, the law also permits the Court to reconsider its sentence in an exceptional case involving unusual and extenuating circumstances,” she wrote. “Now that the Defendant has been sentenced, the People again request the Court set a hearing as soon as practicable upon the receipt of the report.”
Meanwhile, Gov. Jared Polis said that his office received an application for clemency from Aguilera-Mederos’ legal team on Monday. His office had previously promised to review any application quickly.
The request to review Aguilera-Mederos’ sentence comes after the case blew up on social media. An online petition for Aguilera-Mederos to be granted clemency or have his sentence commuted has garnered more than 4.6 million signatures, and scores of truck drivers have said they won’t travel through Colorado over what they consider to be unfair laws.
Even reality personality-turned-legal aspirant Kim Kardashian weighed in on the situation.
“Another shocking and unfair part of this case is that the judge didn’t want to sentence him to such a lengthy sentence,” Kardashian wrote on Twitter. “However, because of the mandatory minimums in Colorado, his hands were tied. Mandatory minimums take away judicial discretion and need to end.”
“Colorado law really has to be changed and this is so unfair,” she continued. “[Gov. Polis] is a really good person and I know he will do the right thing.”
Colorado has mandatory minimum sentencing laws and prison sentences must be successive in cases that deal with “crimes of violence.” Aguilera-Mederos was convicted of 27 counts—including vehicular homicide, assault in the first degree, attempt to commit assault in the first degree, vehicular assault, reckless driving, and careless driving causing death—and must serve each sentence successively rather than concurrently.
During the sentencing, the district court judge said that he would have liked to give Aguilera-Mederos a lesser sentence but couldn’t because of the state’s laws. A juror also spoke out to FOX31 saying they “cried [their] eyes out” after the sentencing. “There is just something wrong to where a judge cannot intervene in some way and say the way this is written is not right,” the juror said
But prosecutors argued during the trial that Aguilera-Mederos checked his brakes shortly before the crash, and had passed at least one emergency ramp he could have used. Valerie Robertson Young, who survived the fiery crash, told KDVR she believed Aguilera-Mederos should serve at least half of his sentence. After the crash, “He just kept saying, ‘I gotta get out of here. I can’t go to jail,’” Young recalled.
Aguilera-Mederos, a Cuban immigrant who had no prior criminal or driving record, wept during his sentencing, saying he wished it was him who had died.
His attorney, James Colgan, said Aguilera-Mederos and his family are overwhelmed with the amount of support they’ve since received.
“His head is just spinning right now because it’s happening so fast,” Colgan told 9News. “You know, you get used to the idea you may spend 110 years in prison on Monday. A week later, you’re asking the governor to give you clemency… You can imagine what it would be like in that chaotic week."
