Easter crash trial | Range of sentences possible if Aimee Michael convicted; jury adjourns for the day

The 24-year-old accused of killing five people in an Easter 2009 crash could spend the rest of her life in prison if convicted on all counts.

Or she could spend just a few years there, given the range of penalties for the charges against her.

A jury has been weighing the evidence against Aimee Michael since 4 p.m. Wednesday. They deliberated all day Thursday before the judge sent them home at 6 p.m. to return at 9 a.m. Friday.

Thursday afternoon, they asked to review the video recording of an interview Michael gave police 11 days after the crash.

Michael initially denied any involvement in it. But around 1 a.m. on April 23, an hour into the interview with Fulton County investigators, she cracked. When they confronted her with clear evidence that her parents' gold BMW was involved in the crash, she admitted she was driving the car, that she fled the scene and that she had it repaired to destroy the evidence.

The jurors reviewed an hour of the recording in court, beginning from the point where she began to waiver under the weight of the evidence.

Then, they returned to a back room to resume their deliberation.

Michael was a recent college graduate on an ice cream run to a Publix when she collided with a silver Mercedes driving alongside her in the eastbound lanes of Camp Creek Parkway.

The Mercedes was flung into oncoming traffic and hit a Volkswagen Beetle head-on. The fiery crash killed an entire family in the Mercedes and a little girl seated in the back of the VW.

Michael is charged with multiple felony and misdemeanor counts. Together, they add up to more than a century behind bars. She rejected a plea deal that would have meant 50 years in prison.

If the Fulton County Superior Court jury convicts Michael, Judge Kimberly M. Esmond Adams will have significant latitude during sentencing, one legal expert said.

The judge could reach for the minimum prison sentence on the charges and run them concurrently, said J. Tom Morgan, a criminal defense attorney in Decatur. Or she could pile on the maximum on each count and require Michael to serve them consecutively, said Morgan, a former DeKalb County District Attorney.

The most serious felony charge -- vehicular homicide in the first degree -- carries a prison term of three to 15 years on each of the five counts. Another big charge, serious injury by vehicle, could put Michael behind bars for one to 15 years. The rest of the charges could get her another three decades.

Michael might have been looking at nothing more than a misdemeanor traffic charge had she remained on the scene, said Morgan.

"People die in traffic accidents all the time, and the other person is not guilty of vehicular homicide. It has to be aggravated, and one of the aggravators is leaving the scene," Morgan said.

All the victims who died were wearing seat belts or strapped into car seats.

Killed in the crash were Mercedes driver Robert Carter and his wife, Delisia, plus their 2-month-old son, Ethan Carter, and Delisia Carter’s daughter Kayla Lemons, 9.

In the Volkswagen, Morgan Johnson, 6, was killed. Her mother, Tracie, 43, survived but suffered broken legs, a broken hip and collarbone and damage to her spleen and liver.

Michael’s lawyer, W. Scott Smith, contended that Carter crossed into Michael’s lane, causing both vehicles to lose control.

That assertion was supported by an expert witness for the defense and undermined by two for the prosecution. The crash scene experts said they could read the tire marks on the road and the damage to the cars and calculate what happened. They alternately said that Michael was the victim in, and the perpetrator of, the crash.

Assistant District Attorney Tanya Miller, the lead prosecutor, said jurors should ignore the defense’s “cockamamie” theory of the crash. She said Michael’s admission to police that she fled the scene was evidence of her guilt in the collision.

“She fled. She ran. She left those people burning,” Miller said during her closing argument Wednesday. “What innocent person would do that?”

But when he summarized his case for the jury, Smith held up two translucent, blue buckets that contained the names of witnesses from before Michael’s flight and after. He asked the jurors to split the case in two in their minds.

Jurors should separate any feelings they may have about his client’s “disgusting” act of flight from their ability to rationally dissect the prosecution’s evidence that she caused the crash, he said.

They should purge their emotions by convicting Michael on the six felony hit and run charges and on the misdemeanor evidence tampering charge that resulted from the alleged events after the crash, he said, so they can parse the crash scene evidence with a clear head.

“Get it out up front, just like you would remove a coat,” he urged them.

Smith argued that Michael was not guilty of the misdemeanor charge of failing to maintain her lane and that she therefore was not guilty of the misdemeanor offense of reckless driving. Each of those offenses is worth a year or less behind bars. But acquittal would be significant because it would mean Michael didn't cause the crash.