Prosecutor in the US asks to lower the sentence of Cuban truck driver from 110 to between 20 and 30 years

The prosecutor in the Cuban trucker case Rogel Aguilera Mederos, recently convicted in EE.UU. to 110 years in prison for a 2019 accident in which four people died, he asked the court on Monday to reduce the sentence to between 20 and 30 years, a decision that the judge postponed until January 13.

According to the Cuban immigrant, on April 25, 2019, on a road west of Denver (Colorado, USA), the truck he was driving lost its brakes and could not stop it while going down a steep hill, thus impacting high speed several crowded vehicles due to a previous accident.

The conviction, unprecedented in the United States, was due to Judge Bruce Jones in mid-December ruling that Aguilera Mederos, 25, should serve 10 years consecutively for each of the six counts of assault in the first degree. with extreme indifference, and five years (also consecutive) for each of the 10 counts of attempted assault in the first degree.

Meanwhile, thousands of protesters gathered this morning in front of the court building of the First Judicial District of Colorado asking for the reduction of the sentence imposed on the truck driver.

The demonstration, called by Colorado Sin Fronteras, Ni1Más and other local community organizations, intentionally coincided with the first judicial appeal hearing of Aguilera Mederos’ sentence, in which prosecutor Alexis King asked the judge that the sentence be reduced to between 20 and 30 years in jail.

But for protesters, that number of years is still too much when compared to recent cases of white truck drivers who also caused similar accidents in which multiple people were killed.

“With the due respect that the families affected by the tragic accident of April 2019 deserve, a sentence of 110 years, or 30 years or 20 years for Rogel is a sample of a judicial system without mercy for the young people of our race and for all people of color in general, ”Hilda Martínez, leader of Ni1Más and one of the organizers of this Monday’s demonstration, told Efe.

“The prosecution was unfair to Rogel. The judge was unfair. State laws are unfair. Those laws have to be modified ”, he added.

Martínez confirmed that she and other leaders are coordinating their efforts with both Aguilera Mederos’ family and defense attorneys to ensure that the laws that allowed the long sentence are modified during the 2022 session of the Colorado legislature.

In written statements presented to the judge on Monday, prosecutor King argued that “as ruled by the jury (last October), Mr. Aguilera Mederos knowingly made multiple active decisions that resulted in the death of four people, serious injuries to others. and massive destruction ”in the accident of April 25, 2019, west of Denver, Colorado.

Poor decisions include failing to use any of the many unbraked truck escape ramps on the side of the road going down the mountains, failing to try to run the truck to shore upon reaching the flat area of ​​the road, and not having hit the truck against any of the protection barriers instead of crashing it into stopped vehicles.

For this reason, the prosecutor said in her plea, “this sentence range (20 to 30 years) reflects an appropriate result for that conduct that was not accidental.”

At the end of the hearing, the prosecutor reported that the meeting had been held by videoconference and that, at the request of Leonard Martínez, Aguilera Mederos’ defense attorney, the judge did not make any decision this Monday on the case, but called a new hearing for Thursday, January 13, this time in person.