Two years ago Anna Stuckey attended a party in Richmond with two friends and coworkers from the Navy base at Norfolk. After stopping for gas, Stuckey ended up on a back road in Stonehouse where she missed a curve in the road and slammed into a tree. The impact killed one passenger, who suffered a broken neck in the crash.
Stuckey was charged with involuntary manslaughter, reckless driving, underage DUI, and driving too fast for highway conditions. She admitted to police that she had had two beers at the party and that she had been driving too fast for the unfamiliar road. Her blood alcohol level three hours after the crash was .06, below the Virginia's legal limit of .08.
One scientist from the Virginia Department of Forensic Science testified that Stuckey's blood alcohol content at the time of the crash could have been as high as .09. At the time of the crash, she was under 21, the legal age for alcohol consumption in Virginia. For underage DUI, the .08 threshold for drunk driving is lowered to .02.
Now 22, Stuckey was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to five years in jail. The majority of the sentence was suspended and Stuckey will spend only six months in jail for causing the fatal car crash. She was also fined $2,250 for the crash and her driver's license was suspended for one year.
Some believe that she received too light of a sentence for the deadly crash and that the judge was too lenient in this case. Stuckey could have been sentenced to up to 13 years for the multiple charges she faced.
Source: The Virginia Gazette, "Her friend died, she got 6 months," Susan Robertson, January 31, 2012
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