Fla. Judge's Dilemma: How to Sentence Teen in Traffic Death?
For the past two weeks, a Florida judge has been thinking about the Ryan Cornett case every day as he drove to work.
Although the state highway patrol determined that Cornett, then 17, wasn’t responsible for the death of Duke Gray, 37, in April 2007, the teen was charged with leaving the scene of an accident. (His lawyer says paramedics told him it was OK to go.) Gray, the investigation found, was drunk and speeding and had already crashed his motorcycle in Land O’Lakes when Cornett ran over him as he lay in the roadway, reports the St. Petersburg Times.
But Gray’s mother was convinced there was more to the story than that, and she wanted Cornett to serve some jail time. She cried as Circuit Judge Pat Siracusa took time out of a busy morning to talk with her and others involved in the case in chambers, before sentencing.
“Every time I tried to work this Rubik’s Cube … I haven’t been able to do it,” Siracusa said at yesterday’s sentencing, deciding against a jail term for Cornett. For one thing, Siracusa said, he is confident Gray wouldn’t have wanted Cornett so severely punished.
However, the judge sentenced him to five years of probation. But, in addition to other, more standard conditions, he also is requiring Cornett to carry a photo of Duke Gray with him everywhere he goes and to replace his MySpace page, which referred to drinking and partying, with the picture. And, once a year, as long as he is on probation, he must serve 48 hours in jail on the anniversary of Gray’s death, the judge decided.
Cornett was relieved by the sentence, and Gray’s mother, Cynthia, also was satisfied, despite her call for an 18-month sentence. Listening to the judge at sentencing, she says, it almost seemed as if her son Duke was talking.
