Life sentence upheld in 2016 crash
Family of 3 died following collision on Thanksgiving
A man convicted of causing the fiery crash that killed a young family of three on Thanksgiving in 2016 must spend his life in prison, the state SupremeCourt ruled this week.
Calling the language of the statute at the heart of the argument “clear and unambiguous,” Justice
P. Kevin Brobson wrote in the majority opinion that “previously convicted at any time” means any time — even simultaneously.
A jury in 2019 convicted 28-year-old Demetrius Coleman of three separate counts of third-degree murder for the deaths of Kaylie Meininger, 21, her fiancé, David Bianco, 29, and their 2-year-old daughter, Annika.
The family was driving near the intersection of Route 30 and Route 48 in North Versailles when Coleman, fleeing from a
traffic stop, plowed into the family’s Ford Taurus, which erupted into a fireball moments after the crash.
Prosecutors had asked for a mandatory life sentence for Coleman — despite the fact that state law sets the maximum penalty for third-degree murder at 20 to 40 years. They pointed to a different part of the law that dictates anyone convicted of third-degree murder who “has previously been convicted at any time of murder or voluntary manslaughter” shouldbe sentenced to a life term.
The District Attorney’s Office argued that because Coleman was convicted of three counts of third-degree murder, he qualified for that mandatory life sentence. The first conviction, despite stemming from the same crime, same trial and same jury, constituted a prior conviction, theyargued.
Judge David Cashman, the trial judge for the case, rejected the idea, calling it “illogical” and “ludicrous.” He sentenced Coleman to 70 to 140 years in prison. Bothsides appealed the sentence. In 2021, a three-judge panel on the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled for the DA’s office, saying that Judge Cashman erred in his sentence, which the panel said went against mandatory sentencing guidelines. Coleman appealed to the state Supreme Court, which upheld thelower court’s ruling.
Most of the argument hinged upon the terms “previously” and “at any time,” with Coleman arguing that “’previous,’ in its everyday use, implies an event other than that under consideration.” Interpreting it otherwise, defense attorneys argued, “would condone a gross disparity: treating a single criminal episode as if it were repeat criminal episodes, basedon happenstance.”
The DA’s office, however, argued that the term should be interpreted literally: “There is no previous conviction too remote, nor too recent, to beexempt from this rule.”
The state Supreme Court agreed, writing that if the law had been meant to specifically target recidivists, lawmakers “could have used different language to effectuate that intent.”
In a dissenting opinion, Justice David Wecht argued that the statute did, in fact, mean to target recidivists.
“Were the objective anything other than punishing a person who has been convicted of murder after already having been given a second chance at freedom following an earlier murder conviction, undoubtedly the General Assembly would have saidso,” he wrote.