SAN DIEGO JUDGE SENTENCES MAN TO 11 YEARS FOR DUI HOMICIDE
By Dana Littlefield
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
September 26, 2007
DOWNTOWN SAN DIEGO – The news was grim last year when a Los Angeles County couple arrived at a San Diego hospital after learning that their daughter had been struck by a suspected drunken driver.
A neurosurgeon told them that Whitney Young, a student at Mesa College, had suffered massive brain injuries and that they should assume she was going to die. What the doctor couldn't tell the parents was when. “We felt like the wind had been taken out of us and our knees buckled,” Stephen Young said during a sentencing hearing yesterday in San Diego Superior Court.
Whitney Young, 19, an aspiring teacher from Palos Verdes Estates, clung to life for four days as dozens of friends and family members flocked to her bedside.
Young died Nov. 16, hours after Eric Joseph Leeman, the man accused of causing her death, was arrested in the College Area, not far from where Young was struck.
At the end of an emotional hearing, Judge Peter C. Deddeh sentenced Leeman to 11 years in prison. Leeman pleaded guilty Aug. 23 to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and admitted he fled the site of the collision.
He could have been sent to prison for up to 15 years.
Leeman, 21, originally was charged with second-degree murder, but the charge was dropped in exchange for the guilty plea. Had he been convicted of second-degree murder, Leeman could have been sent to prison for 15 years to life.
Note: This is a prime example of how politics infiltrate our system, especially in DUI cases. Six years ago I represented a woman on a 15-to-life DUI Homicide case and ultimately settled the case with the prosecutor for 5 years, 6 months. he judge concurred. One young man died, two others were crippled. There were three victims in all, and my client had prior drug convictions. However, it was a hard fought case and settled right in the middle of the sentencing range.
The sentencing Judge here, who has been reversed repeatedly by the Fourth District Court of Appeals when he has ruled against the defense on fundamental privacy and privilege matters, imposed an 11-year sentence on a very young man on a single victim case. Politics, not fundamental fairness, is the name of the game.
Witnesses testified during a preliminary hearing in March that a car hit Young about 3:15 a.m. Nov. 12 as she and a group of friends crossed Montezuma Road near Rockford Drive. The car didn't stop or slow down.
Pieces of the car broke off on impact. A San Diego police officer later saw in a nearby driveway a 1997 BMW that matched the description of the one that hit Young.
Leeman, who was not taking college classes or working at the time, was arrested at his College Area home.
Witnesses testified that they had seen him drinking heavily at a party hours before the collision.
His voice cracking with emotion, Leeman apologized in court for the pain he caused Young's family. He said he initially lied to friends and family about the damage to his car “not out of self-preservation, but out of shock because I caused the death of another human being.”
He said he prayed every night for the family's forgiveness.
Several members of Young's family – including her parents and an older brother and sister – spoke of the efforts they've made to glean hope from tragedy. The family donated her organs, started a scholarship foundation in her name and raised money for Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
“We want Whitney to be as proud of us as we were of proud of her,” Stephen Young said.
