Prosecutors in South Carolina say the drunk driver who killed a bride on her wedding night and has asked for her sentence to be reduced should serve the full sentence.
As previously reported by Law&Crime, Jamie Komoroski, 27, has asked Charleston County Ninth Judicial Circuit Judge Deadra L. Jefferson to reconsider her 25-year prison sentence. The night of April 28, 2023, Komoroski was driving a Toyota Camry through the island community of Folly Beach, where newlyweds Samantha Miller, 34, and Aric Hutchinson, 36, had recently married. They had left their wedding reception in a golf cart driven by Hutchinson’s brother-in-law, Benjamin Garrett, and his 17-year-old son, Brogan Garrett.
Komoroski, who was 25 years old at the time, is believed to have been driving 65 mph in a 25 mph zone when she collided with the golf cart, killing Miller and seriously injuring Hutchinson and the other two passengers. According to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, Komoroski had a blood alcohol concentration of.261, which was more than triple the legal limit.
In December, she pleaded guilty to DUI resulting in great bodily injury, DUI resulting in death, and reckless homicide resulting in death, and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Later that month, she filed a motion to reconsider the sentence. Her lawyers argued that the sentence was higher than those imposed for similar crimes, and that media coverage of the case contributed to what they called “gross disproportionality” in sentencing.
According to court records, the prosecutors in this case filed an opposition on Thursday.
Komoroski’s request, according to lawyers from the solicitor’s office, should be “denied without an additional hearing,” according to WCIV.
Prosecutors also reportedly argued that Komoroski’s sentence was appropriate for the charges to which she pleaded guilty.
According to Charleston CBS affiliate WCSC, the solicitor’s office stated that Komoroski’s lawyers’ assertion that her sentence is “cruel and unusual punishment” is based on a “flawed” analysis. According to the station, prosecutors cited state precedent that established the standards for determining whether a sentence was “grossly disproportionate” to the crime, claiming that Komoroski’s case could not be compared to any other felony DUI cases in the area.
It was also “clear to the State and the assembly that the Court was attentive and weighed all of the information that was offered,” according to the filing. Lawyers for the state stated that Komoroski’s victims are opposed to any reduction in the drunk driver’s sentence.
“I wish more than anything that it was me instead of Sam,” Hutchinson said at Komoroski’s sentencing. “I wish I’d died that night so she didn’t have to go alone.”