Ellison to serve 6 months for DUI

PALMER – Just last year, Renee Ellison agreed to a five-year prison sentence for drunken driving and assault but, after two trials and nearly two years in the court system, she was sentenced to six months in prison Friday.

“Anyone who is as intoxicated as she was at 7 o’clock on a Sunday morning we should all be scratching our heads,” Superior Court Judge Beverly Cutler said in handing down her sentence.

In a brief statement, Ellison told Cutler, “This has definitely been a lesson learned and I apologize for my actions.”

Assistant District Attorney Mike Walsh had asked for a 26-month sentence. Ellison’s attorney Bruce Brown argued she should be given no time above and beyond the 90 days she served in jail before she made bail. Brown pointed out that Ellison had already shown, with her completion of a treatment program, that she was well on her way to rehabilitation.

For his part, Walsh described Brown’s suggestion as “the figurative slap on the wrist,” and told Cutler, “This is simply not the type of conduct that the court can take lightly.”

To come up with her sentence, Cutler cited a number of recent sentences handed down on charges similar to those on which Ellison was convicted by a jury last week — DUI, reckless driving and second- and third-degree assault. Most, she said, received less than six months in prison.

For his part, Walsh pointed to the case of Martha Harper, who Cutler sentenced to eight years in prison after a drunken driving accident that broke another motorist’s ankle, an injury that required two days’ hospitalization. By contrast, Walsh said, Kim Alred, one of the victims in Ellison’s case, was laid up for weeks in the hospital.

Cutler begged to differ.

“She was driving suicidally, homicidally, for 12 miles,” Cutler said of Harper, who led police on a chase through Wasilla before crossing into the oncoming lane of traffic on the Glenn Highway and hitting another car in August 2006. Cutler said it was a stretch to compare Ellison to Harper.

Ellison’s case has began in the early morning hours of June 18, 2006 when Ellison was one party in an accident at Seward-Meridian Parkway and Palmer-Wasilla Highway.

Prosecutors say Ellison ran a red light and broadsided a taxicab, putting Alred — who was driving the cab — and her passenger Jason Hamilton in the hospital. Ellison was also hospitalized.

Last year, Ellison accepted an 11th-hour plea agreement as jurors were being picked for her trial. Under the terms of that agreement she was to serve five years in prison in exchange for a guilty plea to second- and third-degree assault and misdemeanor DUI.

When it came time to hand down a sentence, though, Cutler balked, refusing to accept the deal. In an interview, Walsh said that Cutler’s stated reason was that she believed the prison term was too harsh.

The case then went to trial, where Ellison was convicted on all counts, leaving her facing a steeper sentence than she’d previously agreed to serve.

Cutler granted Ellison’s motion for a new trial based on new evidence coming to light, Some of that evidence was hashed out in hearings outside the jury’s presence and had to do with Alred’s medical history, which included problems with her back that might have contributed to the fractured vertebrae she received in the wreck.

Walsh said in an interview that the defense presented no new evidence at the second trial.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.