CHEBOYGAN - While the location was clearly a courtroom, the criminal sentencing for a drunken driver felt more like a memorial service for the victim. While it was punishment handed out, there was acknowledgment that retribution cannot right the wrong, said those who gathered in the northern Michigan courtroom Tuesday.Eight-year-old Amy Fedel would have attended third grade at Ann Arbor's Eberwhite Elementary School this year. Instead, she died last summer when a drunken driver drove his truck at 72 mph into the Fedel family van without trying to stop.
Kenneth LaHaie, the 37-year-old Cheboygan man who got behind the wheel after downing a dozen beers last July 31, was sentenced to prison Tuesday after an emotional two-hour hearing that recounted both the crash and a little girl's life.
No one went home happy after a judge sent LaHaie to prison.
"The man has got three young children himself - his wife just gave birth," Cheboygan County Prosecutor Joseph Kwiatkowski said Wednesday.
"LaHaie made that trip (from work in the thumb area to Cheboygan) for 18 years and hasn't had an accident, not even a speeding ticket. Of course, our counter-argument was, 'That's all well and good, he's a good fellow. As defendants go, he's about the nicest person I've encountered in a courtroom.'"
But Kwiatkowski asked Cheboygan County Circuit Judge Scott Pavlich to sentence LaHaie to the maximum, 10-15 years in prison.
"It wasn't one or two beers, it was 12," he said. LaHaie had been driving for four hours after drinking the beers. His blood-alcohol measured 0.16 percent, substantially above the 0.10 level for drunken driving. "And each of those 12 beers became a nail in Amy's coffin," Kwiatkowski said.
LaHaie's attorney, Bruce Cranham, recited mitigating factors - LaHaie's lack of any criminal record, his confession, his agreement to plead guilty to drunken driving leading to death and serious injury. But LaHaie, Kwiatkowski countered, already had had more than his share of breaks.
"He lived. In a no-braking, 72-mph crash, he survived. And he wasn't charged with second-degree murder." Prison would separate him from his family, Kwiatkowski conceded. But it won't be forever, he said, and Amy's death will.
Jean Eridon told Pavlich about her last day as Amy's mother.
Then came Mike Fedel, Amy and Lisa's father. "How many people do we have to kill before we take this seriously? Do we say that, 'Because you're a nice guy, there are no consequences?'" he asked, according to those in the courtroom.
It all led up to Amy and seven minutes of videotape. "There was footage of her as a young child, when she was 3, when Lisa was born, holding her at the hospital. When she was 5, running around catching her first snow flakes when they moved to Michigan. When she was about 6, doing an impromptu dance in a tutu," Kwiatkowski said.
And when she just turned 8.
"Her dad would ask her profound questions - 'What's your biggest question?' She said, 'I want to know who created God.' He asked, 'What's your biggest fear?' She said, 'Dying.'" It was a difficult video to watch, the prosecutor said.
The Fedels likely will have the tape professionally edited and shown at driver education and substance abuse programs.
LaHaie, in tears, turned to the Fedel family in court and apologized. He acknowledged he deserved punishment, but asked the family to forgive him, according to those who were there.
The judge finally handed down a four-year sentence, for punishment, protecting the public from LaHaie, rehabilitation and deterrence of others. LaHaie also was sentenced to three-to-five years concurrently, for Lisa's injuries.
The first and last factors weighed in on the side of a heavy sentence, Pavlich told the gallery. The second and third factored for a lighter term, because LaHaie was remorseful: He fainted when he heard Amy died.
The maximum sentence, Pavlich said, must be reserved for defendants who have no remorse and repeat the crime, over and over.
Mike Fedel, who took Lisa after the sentencing to the hospital where she had lain in a coma and Amy had died, said this morning that the outcome was as positive as it could be, given the law and the fact that nothing can bring Amy back.
And Jean Eridon got a little peace at 1 a.m. today when, for the first time, Lisa woke her and told her she dreamed about Amy as she was, alive. The two little girls traveled together in Lisa's dream to the end of a rainbow.
"It seems Lisa has been released from something that's been holding her back emotionally," Eridon said today. "I think this gave her a sense of peace. And I feel super - I know now that she's going to be OK."
Copyright 1999 Michigan Live Inc.