By Rory Fleming
When working at a certain defunct criminal justice reform organization at Harvard, I found myself reaching juvenile life without parole sentencing and came across the case of “White Boy” Rick. Rick Wershe was relatively unique amongst kids sentenced to die in prison, as he never was accused or convicted of murder. Instead, he was a prolific young drug dealer snubbed by the FBI, despite his attempts to cooperate.
I asked a supervisor why we never talked about his case and got a set of awkward responses. He may have unsavory friends or family members, for example, and besides, he isn’t in the category of prisoners most deserving of help. It didn’t matter that the particular injustice of his sentence was more pronounced.
I have been thinking about this again in the aftermath of my Davis Vanguard editorial compounding the viral attention received by the plight of Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, the trucker who crashed after his brakes failed. For an accidental crash not caused by intoxicated driving, he originally received 110 years in prison. Colorado Governor Jared Polis commuted his sentence to 10 years, with parole eligibility in five years. By 2026, Mr. Aguilera-Mederos should be a free man. Alexis King, the DA in charge of the case, protested the decision, preferring a sentence of 20-30 years because that is the harshest concrete recommendation she heard from a victim’s family member.
To my surprise, there are many other cases very similar to his: accidental car crashes leading to felony convictions and vastly disproportionate criminal sentences. One such case is that of Kenneth McDaniel, who caused an accidental crash that killed his first wife and their children. Doug Valeska, the notoriously unethical former District Attorney in Dothan, Alabama, smeared him as a drunk driver, despite him being breathalyzed at a .055 — state law considers only over .08 a DUI. Valeska charged McDaniel under a habitual offender law, due to his prior criminal record, and the judge issued consecutive sentences for several charges.
Hearing the news of Mr. Aguilera-Mederos’ receiving clemency, Virginia McDaniel, his wife, tweeted “Yes my husband doing 100 years for accident but nobody want talk about that I’ll post it and maybe one person will comment.”
So what makes one case viral and another irrelevant? McDaniel’s driving behavior on the day of the tragic crash was not spotless, but neither was Aguilera-Mederos’. The latter could have taken an off-ramp to avoid oncoming traffic and he was speeding. Yet both men received vastly disproportionate sentences for unintentional homicide.
It seems to be a mix of case facts and the same cynical thought process that was used to shut me down at Harvard. “No one will care because he’s white.” “It’s Alabama, no one will ever reduce his sentence. Besides, that’s [Just Mercy author] Bryan Stephenson’s territory. And he doesn’t care about the case, no one else will.” I have heard these comments before, too.
In short, this form of “justice” is arbitrary.
And while viral outrage can fix unfair results in specific cases, that is where it’s usefulness usually ends.
Can we successfully fight for anything more?
Probably not with virality, at least not alone. The targets of successful advocacy campaigns tend to be individual cases.
Yet, if five million people signed a Change.org petition demanding the resignation of DA Alexis King, Aguilera-Mederos’s prosecutor, she would almost certainly resign, and that would have an impact that echoes beyond a single case. When national media reported on the bizarre punitive bloodlust of former Caddo Parish (Shreveport) District Attorney Dale Cox, he opted to not run again, which paved the way for the first Black DA in county history. While King doesn’t seem to sport that same bloodlust, certainly some of the deputy prosecutors in her office do, and she has not fired them even after they showed who they are. Unfortunately, outrage always fades, and accountability becomes less likely as more time passes.
Likewise, if five million people sent emails to the Colorado state legislature, demanding a change to sentencing laws to avoid a case like this ever happening again, legislators would almost certainly take heed. Same with the state bar, in terms of attorney discipline.
Ideally, we would be able to have a system of justice where fairness does not depend on selective viral outrage. But that would depend on legislators being willing to upset people who believe victims of crimes and tragedies are the same, and that both groups deserve have-it-your-way justice and the ability to determine sentencing harshness. Sometimes what victims (and prosecutors) demand, especially immediately after an incident, is not just, but calling that out is rarely popular. Either way, Kenneth McDaniel deserves just as much of a sentence reduction as Rogel Aguilera-Mederos.
Rory is a writer and licensed attorney.
