Family decries disparity in Merced, Sonoma DUI sentences
Merced County District Attorney Larry Morse hugs a relative outside of the Sonoma County Courthouse on Wednesday. Morse, with his wife and two other children, left the court after a hearing to reduce the 12 year sentence imposed last July on Dylan Morse for the death of Alex Ruiz and injury to two others while driving drunk last February.
John Burgess/The Press DemocratPublished: Friday, December 4, 2009 at 6:06 p.m.
Last Modified: Friday, December 4, 2009 at 6:06 p.m.
Central Valley prosecutor Larry Morse walked out of a Sonoma County courtroom this week with tears in his eyes after a judge slashed a prison sentence handed down to his 19-year-old son, convicted in a felony drunken-driving crash that killed one person and left another in a coma.
Yet back in Merced County, where Morse is district attorney, the parents of Aubree Hogue, 22, are feeling no such relief.
Morse's office pushed for an 11-year sentence for their daughter after she killed two men in an alcohol-fueled accident in 2007. While her actions were inexcusable, the parents said it's unfair that prosecutors called a harsher sentence on her than the one the district attorney's son ultimately received.
“There's definitely some hypocrisy here,” said Richard Hogue, a farmer in the rural community of Dos Palos, just south of Merced. “He's a decent father, but what he did to me and my family I despise.”
Morse said he wasn't involved in charging Hogue and that the circumstances of the case were different. He added that since his son, Dylan Morse, was involved in the fatal Valentine's Day crash while visiting a friend at Sonoma State University, he has relegated decision-making in alcohol-related accidents to a chief deputy.
“The last thing in the world I would ever want to be as a prosecutor is hypocritical,” Morse said. “I believe the most important thing a person in my position can do is treat everybody the same.”
The disparity reflects the challenges of prosecuting drunken-driving cases in which people die and young people's lives are forever altered. It also has touched off concern about sentence parity and sparked conversations from the courthouse to the dinner table about whether justice truly is blind.
Morse's son, Dylan Morse, got an unusual reprieve this week when Sonoma County Judge Ken Gnoss lopped nine years off the 12-year prison sentence he had initially handed down for the Feb. 14 crash that killed Berkeley art student Alex Ruiz, 22, and left Morse's friend, Ryne Spitzer, 19, in a coma.
Despite the younger Morse's use of a fake ID to buy beer and past drug use, Gnoss granted a reduction, citing Morse's age, acceptance of the charges and clean recor.
The ruling followed emotional pleas from both sides and numerous letters sent to the judge, both from Morse supporters and from advocates for stronger drunken driving laws. Morse's mother, Cindy Morse, also a lawyer, urged the judge not to consider her husband's position as a prosecutor in making his decision.
Larry Morse remained silent in several hearings but expressed relief after the resentencing that his eldest son would not spend the next decade behind bars. Morse's lawyer, Chris Andrian, said Dylan Morse could be out in 28 months, about the statewide average for similar cases.
Meanwhile, Aubree Hogue is starting her second year at a women's prison near Chowchilla and could be out in 2017 when she turns 30, her parents said.
Her mother, Gina Moore, said she makes the 17-mile trip to the prison every Saturday to visit the former varsity softball player and 2005 graduate of Dos Palos High. Her daughter made a horrible mistake, she said, but the long sentence won't help her victims or her.
She worries her daughter will be changed for the worse by her exposure to prison, which she described as “a vicious, dangerous place.”
“It's such a waste,” said Moore, a longtime bookkeeper. “She's not a bad kid.”
Aubree Hogue's undoing came the night of Oct. 20, 2007. Then 20, she was drinking in a bar in the Central Valley town of Atwater, a CHP report said.
Rather than spending the night at the house of a nearby friend, she attempted to drive home in her Chevy pickup. She was headed the wrong way on Highway 99 when she slammed into an oncoming car carrying four military servicemen, killing two sailors.
Her blood-alcohol content was more than twice the legal limit, her lawyer said.
Prosecutors were asked by the California Highway Patrol to seek second-degree murder charges because Hogue showed malice for driving despite the offer of a place to stay from a friend, said Chief Deputy District Attorney Mark Bacciarini.
Also, Bacciarini said, Hogue should have known better than to drink and drive because her stepfather, Daniel Moore Jr., was convicted of a fatal drunken driving crash and served five years in prison.
Prosecutors offered Hogue the 11-year sentence if she pleaded guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter, felony drunken driving and an enhancement, Bacciarini said.
He said his boss, Larry Morse, was not involved in the case. But he noted that Merced County is tough on drinking and driving in general.
“We're going to punish it harshly,” Bacciarini said.
Aubree Hogue's parents have a different view. They said prosecutors made it clear early that they were going to make an example of their daughter and that charging decisions came from the top.
Peter Kapetan, the Hogue's lawyer, said Aubree Hogue was ready to plead to initial charges that would have resulted in a six-to-eight-year prison sentence, but the judge would not accept the plea because prosecutors were amending the complaint.
Rather than facing the possibility of two 15-year sentences with second-degree murder conviction, Hogue accepted the agreement that will keep her locked up at least 10 years.
“They would not deal at all,” Kapetan said.
However, other Merced-area defense attorneys said Morse has not been more aggressive or unyielding than his predecessors since taking office in 2006. And some said the Morse and Hogue cases were vastly different.
Attorney Hayden Smith said the Legislature in recent years has made it harder to defend drunken driving cases and prosecutors statewide routinely seek the maximum punishment.
“I've seen DAs get super worked-up in a lot of counties,” Smith said. “I don't think in Merced County the DA is particularly rabid.”
Others among the Central Valley defense bar wondered how Morse's office would handle future DUI-manslaughter cases given the experience with his own son.
“It could be one of those ugly moral quandaries,” said Merced defense attorney Mike Fagalde. “My guess is he has enough subordinates to be hands-off for a while, but if a high-profile case comes through, he is going to have to deal with it in some way.”
In Sonoma County, some attorneys who saw Gnoss's shift of Morse's sentence from 12 years to three years as extreme, questioned whether he would face similar problems in future cases.
Richard Hogue said he and his family closely watched the Dylan Morse case. He thought 12 years and eight months was too long but was surprised the Sonoma County judge, a former prosecutor, knocked it down to three years.
“I fought as hard as I could for my daughter. He fought as hard as he could for his son,” Hogue said of Larry Morse. “He came out a little better than I did.”
Now, Hogue said he would do everything he could to get his daughter out sooner, but just how that will happen is unclear.
“I think it's politics,” Hogue said. “It's not what you know, it's who you know. If I had a million dollars to spend defending my daughter she would be out right now.”
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