Two district attorneys in Colorado have written a letter to Governor Jared Polis to voice disapproval of his recent decision to grant truck driver Rogel Aguilera-Mederos clemency for the 110-year prison sentence that followed an accident that killed four and injured others.

The letter, signed by district attorneys Michael T. Daugherty and Danial P. Rubinstein, is very critical of the governor’s move. While the DAs show concern that Aguilera-Mederos’ new 10-year sentence is too short, their main issue seems to lie in how Polis commuted the sentence prior to the date that the sentence was set to be officially addressed in court – an action that they claim undermined “the integrity and confidence that Coloradans place in the justice system.”

The DAs, both on a ‘Sentencing Reform Task Force’ set to address the underlying issues that led to Aguilera-Mederos’ lengthy initial sentence, called Polis’ move to commute unprecedented, with the attorneys reporting that no other instance of a governor commuting a pending case could be found. They called his action a “troubling precedent” given that a hearing was already set for sentence reconsideration in the case.

The district attorneys also re-stated some of the evidence against Aguilera-Mederos in the case, calling the 10-year sentence too short for an action that cost four lives. While the DAs noted that they felt the initial 110-year sentence was too long for a crime involving reckless conduct, not intentionality, certain factors of the case were described as “egregious.” Because of this, it is believed that the district attorney involved in the case would have asked for a resentencing of 20 to 30 years – much shorter than the original 110-year sentence, but still much longer Polis’ 10-year sentence.

The district attorneys provided the following support for a sentence longer than 10 years:

1. Aguilera-Mederos was not qualified to operate a truck safely. He had failed portions of his driving exam, had falsified past experience, and had disabled safety features on his truck, presumably to hide his speed and his rest times – something regulated for commercial truck drivers.

2. Aguilera-Mederos had been speeding and driving dangerously in hours leading up to the fatal crash. This was captured on camera and reported by several witnesses.

3. Aguilera-Mederos’ brakes had been failing prior to the wreck. At one point, he had pulled over to check them and was instructed by his supervisor to give the brakes more time to cool off for proper inspection. He resumed driving minutes later.

4. Once the brakes gave out, Aguilera-Mederos failed to use available emergency options, including a runaway truck ramp. He also did not flash his lights or use his horn as a warning.

5. Aguilera-Mederos turned toward the victims’ vehicles instead of another truck in moments before impact, fearing that hitting the truck would cause greater injury to himself. The DAs wrote that this action showed “he put his interests above those of others at every moment leading to, and including, the crash.”

As the letter to Polis continues, the district attorneys return to criticizing the governor’s intervention in the case.

“To intervene prior to allowing the judge – who heard every witness, saw all the evidence, and knew the case better than anyone – to exercise his statutory authority, was unprecedented, premature, and unwarranted. The justice system is already set up to reach the proper sentence in this situation through the mechanism provided by the Legislature. The untimely intervention undermined the criminal justice system as it presumed a failure that had yet to occur – and did not allow for the justice system to run its standard course. To put it bluntly, the difference here would have required you to simply wait two weeks for the Court to finish the scheduled hearing.”

The DAs also reported that Polis’ action has resulted in a “substantial ripple effect,” using a Boulder County sexual assault case as an example. In that case, the DA is trying to push a plea deal through that would require an adult accused of sexually assaulting a young female family member to serve eight years in prison. The defense in the Boulder County case is now arguing that eight years is too long considering the 10-year sentence for a crime that left four dead in the Aguilera-Mederos case.

“By acting when and how you did, you undercut the community’s trust in District Attorney King and the justice system of our entire state,” wrote the attorneys.

A statement from a spokesperson on Polis’ team said that Polis was stepping in as a “problem-solver,” feeling that the bizarre sentence itself undermined Colorado’s justice system. The statement did not address why Polis commuted the sentence while the case was still pending.

According to the letter, Polis is set to attend a Colorado District Attorneys’ Council board meeting in January, with the goal of the letter described as a tool to help facilitate a constructive discussion at the meeting.

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