Norcal Duer's-Vellanoweth gets 17-plus years for fatal crash

[AlCzervik]

By Andy Furillo - [email protected]
Published 8:13 am PDT Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Again and again, the judge called the entire defense "preposterous." He called the defendant "arrogant," and said that he "lied" on the witness stand in his own defense.

Then, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Patrick Marlette dropped the heaviest hammer that he could on Roberto P. Vellanoweth, the once-prominent citizen who appeared at his sentencing today in jail-issue orange, chained by the wrists at the waist.

Brushing aside the defendant's plea for leniency, Marlette instead imposed a maximum term of 17 years and eight months for Vellanoweth's drunken car crash last year on South Land Park Drive in which he killed four people and seriously injured a fifth victim.

"I ask for your mercy and a just sentence," Vellanoweth said, in a statement to the court.

The judge responded with remarks that covered 50 minutes and blasted at the core of Vellanoweth's defense and at his attempts to express contrition. Marlette said it was "offensive" that Vellanoweth tried to characterize the fatal wreck as a "mishap."

In one major respect, Marlette said, the sentence he issued today came down to a matter of character. Vellanoweth sought mercy based on his life's work as a state career executive and as a lay official in the local Catholic archdiocese, a background that he said established himself as a candidate for a judicial break.

Marlette countered that Vellanoweth's behavior from the time of the crash when he first said it was his wife who was driving, to his attempts to ingratiate himself to the police at the hospital afterwards, to his trial testimony where he tried to blame the victims for their deaths all added up to the test of the defendant's "true character."

"You got up here on this stand and you lied," Marlette told Vellanoweth. "You not only lied to take the responsibility away from yourself, you lied to give the responsibility to people who were the victims of your responsibility. And I'm taking that as a measure of your character."

Vellanoweth, 64, was convicted July 10 on four counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and two other drunken driving counts.

more at link and imho he got off easy.

http://www.sacbee.com/101/v-print/story/1240346.html