The Associated Press
WHITE RIVER JUNCTION, Vt. (AP) - The man who pleaded guilty to striking and killing a state police trooper with his car was sentenced Wednesday to as much as 33 years in prison.
Vermont District Court Judge Mary Miles Teachout handed down individual sentences on each of the seven counts to which Eric Daley, 24, had previously pleaded guilty.
In total, the sentences added up to 26 to 33 years in prison.
Daley earlier this year agreed to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter for the death of state police Sgt. Michael Johnson on Interstate 91 in Norwich last year. He also pleaded guilty to six other charges, including several drug possession counts.
The plea deal limited his prison term to 33 years. Although Daley pleaded guilty, the judge held a three-day sentencing hearing, taking testimony from other troopers who had been involved in the traffic stop from which Daley fled before striking and killing Johnson.
A day before the sentence was handed down, Johnson’s widow told a crowded courtroom about her devastation and pain.
Moments later, Daley took the stand and apologized.
“Every morning I wake up and my first thought is, ‘Oh, he’s not really there,” Kerrie Johnson, the officer’s widow, said. “I feel like I’m being kicked in the stomach over and over.”
“Nothing can make up for the loss of Michael,” Kerrie Johnson. “I would trade places with him in an instant for him to be back with his children.
Daley on Tuesday read a letter of apology. He said he ran from police because he was carrying drugs and thought troopers were violating his rights by trying to search his car, and he said he didn’t know he had struck Johnson.
“I destroyed a man. I destroyed a family. I destroyed a community,” Daley said in a quiet, steady voice.
Johnson’s daughter, Reilly, 10, and sons Grady, 8, and McKendrick, 6, wrote letters to the judge that Pam Weigel, a victims’ advocate in the Windsor County State’s Attorney’s Office, read to the court Tuesday. They wrote about family vacations to the ocean, roughhousing with their dad, his cheerfulness, the joy of his company.
Reilly wrote about her family’s return home on June 15, 2003 to find state troopers waiting with news of her father’s death.
“I hid in my room. I did not want to face one single person,” she wrote. “I felt like a cookie shredded into crumbs.”
Daley said he made many errors in judgment when he drove off from the initial police stop in Thetford, led officers on a chase that reached 120 mph and finally ran off after the crash.
He said he fled because he had marijuana, LSD and Ecstasy in his car. After traveling about 6 miles he came upon a three-car caravan from a New Hampshire school at the spot where Johnson was setting up spikes to deflate Daley’s tires.
Daley said he thought he was about to crash into one of the school vehicles and saw Johnson on the right side of the highway. He jerked the wheel left, toward the median, so that he would be the only one to be injured in a crash, Daley testified. He said he didn’t know Johnson had raced toward the median and didn’t realize his car struck the trooper.