A Shoreline man charged with felony vehicular homicide in a road-rage incident will be given an opportunity to plead guilty to a couple of misdemeanors and spend only a year in jail.
A jury last month could not unanimously decide if Lukasz Pawel Kutek, 22, was guilty of vehicular homicide in the traffic death of a 16-year-old Lake Stevens girl.
Kutek probably won’t be tried for vehicular homicide again, a deputy prosecutor said Tuesday. He will, however, likely wind up with a couple of lesser convictions and a jail term of up to a year, deputy prosecutor Michael Downes said.
That’s the latest twist in Kutek’s case after a jury voted 11-1 to convict him of the felony vehicular homicide in connection with the April 27, 2002, prom-night traffic death of Georgia Pemberton.
Kutek is scheduled to appear before Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Larry McKeeman. If he doesn’t plead guilty to reckless driving and disorderly conduct, Downes said he will ask the judge for a new trial date on the vehicular homicide charge.
Kutek allegedly had been involved in a road-rage incident with Allison Arnold, 34, of Bellevue on Highway 104 in Edmonds. The incident involved vehicles passing each other, applying brakes and maneuvering from lane to lane.
A jury earlier decided that Arnold attempted to pass Kutek by swerving into the oncoming lane, where his sport utility vehicle slammed into a Ford Mustang in which the girl was a passenger.
Arnold was convicted and sentenced to about 3 1/2years in prison.
Downes said he expects Kutek to plead guilty to the misdemeanor and gross misdemeanor charges. He believes sentencing will be delayed for several months to see if Kutek can get into the county’s work-release program.
Downes will recommend a jail term of one year, plus two years of probation.
Kutek could have been sentenced to about two years in prison if he had been convicted of vehicular homicide.
Although most of the jurors voted to convict Kutek, they told lawyers they didn’t believe he should have been charged with a felony.
“Kutek didn’t start it, and he didn’t drive on the wrong side of the road,” Downes said, adding that Kutek is probably less to blame than Arnold, and that is why the new charges are not as serious as the old ones.
The victim’s mother, Katie Pemberton, and members of her family sat through both the Arnold and Kutek trials. She prefers a felony conviction, but said, “I don’t know if my family could handle the wear and tear of another trial.”
She said the legal process has been hard on her and others.
“I have to take what I can get, and this is all I can get,” Pemberton said.
Jim Haley is a writer for The Herald in Everett.
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