Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 28, 1992 TAG: 9203280225
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Medium
Circuit Judge J. Michael Gamble sentenced Douglas Harden, a Forest shoe designer, to three years in prison.
In a room filled with emotional family members of Harden and of the two dead men, Gamble suspended an additional five years of prison time which a jury had said Harden should serve.
Harden, 40, was convicted of manslaughter last year for the deaths of his brother-in-law, 29-year-old Stuart McCabe, and another man, 55-year-old Frederick Earl Hicks.
Harden was drunk on vodka and speeding on Christmas Eve 1990 when his car crashed into Hicks' vehicle on Coffee Road in eastern Bedford County, prosecutors said.
In setting Harden's sentence Friday, Gamble said that he had to weigh conflicting factors: public outcry which demanded a stiff punishment versus state sentencing guidelines which recommended no prison time at all.
The year-old guidelines were intended to create some much-needed consistency in sentencing across Virginia, Gamble said.
Still, he said, "We need to consider the public's outrage - the public expects something to be done."
For Betty Hicks, a three-year-sentence was not doing enough.
"Indeed not," said Hicks, whose husband of 32 years was driving home from church when Harden's vehicle smashed into his. "Where are the laws for the people?"
"Until we make people realize that if you drink and drive, you're going to jail, they're going to keep right on drinking and driving and killing," Betty Hicks said outside the courtroom Friday. "It's telling them to just go right on killing."
Harden had previously been convicted of drunken driving in Georgia in 1986.
Hicks, who has filed a civil suit against Harden, clutched a large, gold-framed portrait of herself and her husband.
During the hearing, Hicks held up the portrait and pointed it in toward the defense table, where a tearful Harden sat.
"I want you to see what you took out of our lives," Hicks said, weeping. "He did not need to die - and he wouldn't have - had you been the responsible citizen you should have been."
McCabe's father, a Bedford County doctor, described his sense of loss.
"I had thought that I knew how to handle death because I've handled it so many times," William McCabe said. "There is no loss like this.
"When it's your kid, it's different."
Stuart McCabe was a passenger in Harden's car. McCabe and Harden were married to sisters - both of whom attended Friday's hearing and sat together, a row behind Harden.
McCabe's wife, Deborah, wept as her father-in-law testified for the prosecution about his grief. Her own father, Ivy Hill developer Allen Harvey, later testified in Harden's defense.
Hicks and William McCabe said they were angry Harden had never apologized.
As he rose to be sentenced though, Harden said he was sorry.
"I stand here and look at you - all of you - and tell you that I'm deeply sorry for what happened to your families," Harden said, sobbing and waving his hands during a rambling speech. "I feel responsible and I am deeply, deeply sorry for it.
"We've torn all these families apart," he said.
He suggested that he be allowed to do community service instead of serving prison time. "You can put me behind bars . . . but I'm going to live with this the rest of my life," he told the judge.
"I feel like I can do the community good by telling them - by telling kids - what a hasty decision can do," Harden said. "And to tell them what are the consequences of this hasty decision."
Even if the judge decided to send him to prison, Harden said, he planned to speak out about drug and alcohol abuse in the future.
"I want to do that. I think God kept me here for a purpose," said Harden, who suffered a hip injury in the accident and still walks with crutches.
"I think it's my destiny to go to kids . . . and maybe save one or two people from making that hasty decision."
Keywords:
FATALITY
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.