Colorado prosecutor asks for review of truck driver’s 110-year sentence in fatal crash

A district attorney in Colorado announced on Wednesday that she had filed a motion to reconsider the 110-year sentence of a truck driver who was found to be at fault in a fatal accident. 

Rogel Aguilera-Mederos received a 110-year sentence after being convicted on 27 counts in October for his part in a 2019 accident in Colorado in which the truck he was driving crashed into several cars, killing four people.

Colorado law requires that Aguilera-Mederos serve the time for each of the counts consecutively, not concurrently.

Since the sentencing, over 4.6 million people have signed a petition urging Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) to grant the driver “clemency or commutation as time served.”

First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King filed the motion to have now-26-year-old Aguilera-Mederos’s sentence reconsidered on Friday. 

“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,” the motion said. 

It added that “the People have begun conferring with the victims in this case to obtain and consider their input in advance of the Court’s hearing” and said that “supplemental information” would be filed in advance of the hearing.

The widely circulated petition notes that Aguilera-Mederos, who was 23 at the time of the accident, had nothing on his driving record and no criminal history.

Aguilera-Mederos has said the crash was caused by malfunctioning brakes in the truck he was driving, but prosecutors argued that he was at fault for the deaths in the accident because of decisions he made, such as not steering the truck to a runaway ramp.

He was convicted on counts including vehicular homicide and vehicular assault.

Jefferson County District Judge Bruce Jones, who sentenced Aguilera-Mederos, said at the time that “if I had the discretion, it would not be my sentence,” according to Reuters.