AURORA | An Arapahoe County judge refused to reduce a 60-year prison sentence for a man convicted of causing a 2008 Aurora crash that killed three people, including a toddler in an ice cream shop.
Judge John Wheeler told Francis Hernandez during a Monday, Nov. 30, hearing that he was considering lowering Hernandez’s sentence from 50 to 54 years by making some of the charges run concurrent rather than consecutively.
But, Wheeler said, Hernandez’s continued missteps during his seven years behind bars — including assaults and getting caught with razor blades multiple times — mean Hernandez hasn’t done anything to warrant a lower sentence.
“That would have to have been earned,” Wheeler said.
Prosecutors, as well as families of the three victims and others hurt in the crash, all opposed lowering Hernandez’s sentence.
Hernandez, 30, was convicted in 2010 of several charges, including child abuse resulting in death and three counts of vehicular homicide. He won’t be eligible for parole until 2038, when he is 53 years old.
The Colorado Supreme Court rejected Hernandez’s appeal earlier this year.
In court Monday, Hernandez, wearing a red Arapahoe County Jail uniform with his hands shackled, told Wheeler that he was sorry for the crash and said that while he made mistakes, including fleeing the scene, the crash was an accident.
“I didn’t commit that on purpose,” Hernandez said.
That was a shift from Hernandez’s 2010 trial, when his defense team argued that Hernandez was a passenger in the SUV that night and said it was his cousin, who was later killed in an unrelated shooting, that was the driver.
Hernandez’s lawyer, public defender Tiffany Aguilera, said Hernandez’s sentence amounts to a life term, something usually reserved for deliberate murders, not accidents.
Police and prosecutors say Hernandez slammed a Chevrolet suburban into a pickup truck at East Mississippi Avenue and South Havana Street on Sept. 4, 2008, killing Patricia Guntharp, 49, of Centennial, and her passenger, Deb Serecky, 51, of Aurora. The impact sent both vehicles crashing into electrical boxes and a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop, pulling 3-year-old Marten Kudlis out of the store and into the street. He later died. Hernandez fled the scene, police said, and was arrested later that night at his apartment in southeast Denver.
At the time of the crash, police said Hernandez was speeding at more than 80 mph in a 40 mph zone.
Jurors deliberated for just a few hours before handing down the unanimous verdict on 19 counts following an eight-day trial in February 2010.
Hernandez has not had a clean record while incarcerated. According to records filed as part of his request for a reduced sentence, he got in a fight with another inmate while at the Arapahoe County Jail and assaulted another inmate in prison. He served a year in a high-security unit for the prison assault.
On five separate occasions he has been caught with a blade, according to prison records, most recently in June.
Prison records also say he is affiliated with a gang, but the name of the gang is redacted from the record.
Hernandez is an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala and will face deportation if he is released. In a motion, his lawyer said he plans to fight deportation and hopes to live in the Denver metro area with his wife and two daughters.