A district judge rejected a victim’s family’s plea for leniency Tuesday, saying their son, a Buddhist, would have wanted the woman who killed him treated with compassion.
District Judge Karen Carroll sentenced Jean Mahoney, a 65-year-old Brattleboro grandmother, to 3 1/2 years in prison, saying there are too many Vermonters driving drunk and a message must be sent to them that their actions can not be tolerated.
Mahoney had earlier pleaded no contest to charges in connection with the death of Ed Softky, 44, of Brattleboro, who died on High Street Oct. 9, 2008, as he was putting something in the back seat of his car.
“This was a tragic incident,” the judge said, while saying there was a need for ‘necessary punishment’ and “deterrence was a very, very important goal.”
Carroll said after reviewing the weekly list of drunken driving cases, that sometimes she was “afraid to get behind the wheel of a car.”
The public needs to be protected, she said, and “deterrence is a goal,” as she ordered Mahoney to serve 3 1/2 years in jail as part of a 7- to 15-year sentence, the rest of which was suspended.
Mahoney swerved and hit Softky, and then drove off despite a shattered windshield. Just moments earlier, she had driven her 10-year-old granddaughter to school, and almost hit another boy outside the school.
Mahoney later called police, saying someone had hit her car and it was damaged. When police went to her West Brattleboro home, they found the damaged Subaru, and a drunk Mahoney.
Carroll rejected a plea from Softky’s mother Marion Softky of Menlo Park, Calif., and his brother, Bill Softky, that Mahoney not be sent to jail, citing Ed Softky’s beliefs as a Buddhist. Softky’s family and friends had written a letter in November 2008, a month after his death, urging the court to be lenient with Mahoney, and the Windham County state’s attorney, Tracy Kelly Shriver, read the letter in court on Tuesday afternoon at his family’s request.
Shriver said she disagreed with the family, while she respected their wishes. She said Mahoney needed to be punished for her actions that day that cost Softky his life.
A college-educated physicist, Softky had worked as a software engineer. After living in Nepal and India, Softky had moved to Vermont to serve as a translator for a Tibetan Buddhist monk, Geshe Ngawang Singey and work with the Thosum Gephelling Institute in Newfane, and was involved in local singing groups.
“Ed’s life was lost in a tragic accident. Can Jean Mahoney’s life be saved by the same tragedy?” the Softky letter stated. “We believe that Ed would have wanted to help relieve Jean’s suffering. How can our community, including our system of law and justice, help Jean Mahoney become a person who benefits herself, her family and our community,” Shriver read, quoting the letter.
Mahoney’s lawyer, public defender Richard Ammons, that Mahoney had already “begun her sentence” the day that Softky died, Oct. 3, 2008, and Mahoney had already stopped drinking and had also pledged never to drive again. Citing Mahoney’s medical problems, Ammons asked that she be sentenced to only a year in prison.
Mahoney checked herself into the Brattleboro Retreat for treatment of alcoholism shortly after the accident, he said, and later attended a yearlong alcohol treatment program, a move the judge praised.
Ammons said Mahoney started drinking with her second husband about 30 years ago, and Mahoney’s personal life was full of pain and tragedy, and she had been sexually abused as a child by her babysitter’s husband. He said she had a severe back injury on the job at a bakery and was disabled.
“She’s been in a kind of prison for the last year and nine months,” Ammons said, noting his client wanted to take responsibility and serve her time in prison.
“She’s looking for some closure,” said Ammons, who said Mahoney had asked her family to stay away from the court hearing. Only one of her sisters and a niece attended the sentencing.
Carroll had also rejected a recommendation from the Department of Corrections, whose case worker Gary Stevens had first recommended a one-year sentence, and later had increased it to two years after discussing the case with his co-workers.
Shriver had urged the judge to sentence Mahoney to five years in prison, as part of a 15-year sentence, which was the highest possible sentence included in the plea agreement reached earlier with Mahoney.
Mahoney had originally been charged with six different offenses, but under the plea agreement she pleaded no contest to charges of cruelty to a child, her granddaughter, while driving drunk; reckless endangerment for driving in a crowded schoolyard, and drunken driving, death resulting, for hitting and killing Softky.
After the sentencing, sheriff’s deputies shackled Mahoney’s hands and took her to a holding cell, to start her sentence immediately.
Source: www.rutlandherald.com
