DENVER (KDVR) — One of the jurors in the deadly Interstate 70 crash trial said he is shocked by the 110-year sentence handed down to the trucker responsible for the crash.
In an exclusive interview with FOX31, he said he feels the governor must intervene to make this just.
In October, a group of jurors found Rogel Aguilera-Mederos guilty on 27 counts for the role he played crashing his big rig into stopped traffic on I-70, killing four people in April 2019.
One of the jurors on the case, who asked not to be identified, reached out to FOX31 after learning last week that Aguilera-Mederos was sentenced to 110 years behind bars.
“I cried my eyes out,” he said, calling the sentence “100-fold of what it should have been.”
On the day of sentencing, the judge said his hands were tied and handed down a penalty based on Colorado law that requires mandatory minimum sentences in Aguilera-Mederos’ case. But the juror said that then means the laws should change.
“There is just something wrong to where a judge cannot intervene in some way and say the way this is written is not right,” the juror said.
The juror said he feels terrible for the families of the four people who died that day and finds himself questioning if he could find it in his heart to forgive Aguilera-Mederos if his own daughter had died in the crash.
He said he would like to think he would and now feels compelled to speak out and fight for Aguilera-Mederos, who he said is guilty of an awful accident.
“I don’t think the governor should sit there and offer him clemency and let him off,” he said,” but to step in and say this would be a more suitable sentence for what had happened.”