Left: Aric Hutchinson and Samantha Miller, moments after getting married on April 28, 2023 (via GoFundMe). Center: Jamie Lee Komoroski awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty on Dec. 2, 2024 (Law&Crime). Right: Jamie Lee Komoroski (Charleston County (S.C.) Sheriff’s Office).
Prosecutors in South Carolina say that the drunk driver who killed a bride on her wedding night — and has asked for her time behind bars to be shortened — should serve her entire sentence.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Jamie Komoroski, 27, asked Charleston County Ninth Judicial Circuit Judge Deadra L. Jefferson to reconsider her 25-year prison sentence. Komoroski was behind the wheel of a Toyota Camry the night of April 28, 2023, speeding through the island community of Folly Beach, where newlyweds Samantha Miller, 34, and Aric Hutchinson, 36, had just gotten married. They had left their wedding reception in a golf cart driven by Hutchinson’s brother-in-law, Benjamin Garrett, and Garrett’s 17-year-old son Brogan Garrett.
Komoroski, who was 25 years old at the time, is estimated to have been driving 65 mph in a 25 mph zone when she crashed into the golf cart, killing Miller and seriously injuring Hutchinson and the two other passengers. According to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, Komoroski had a BAC of .261, more than triple the legal limit.
She pleaded guilty in December to DUI resulting in great bodily injury, DUI resulting in death, and reckless homicide resulting in death and was sentenced to spend 25 years in prison. Later that month, she filed a motion to have that sentence reconsidered. Her lawyers argued that the sentence was higher than sentences issued for similar crimes, and that media coverage of the case was partly to blame for what they said was a “gross disproportionality” in sentencing.
Court records show that the prosecutors in the case filed an opposition on Thursday.
Komoroski’s request, lawyers from the solicitor’s office say, should be “denied without an additional hearing,” according to a report by local ABC affiliate WCIV.
Prosecutors also reportedly argued that Komoroski’s sentence was within the range for the charges to which she had pleaded guilty.
According to Charleston CBS affiliate WCSC, the solicitor’s office said that the assertion by Komoroski’s lawyers that her sentence is “cruel and unusual punishment” is the result of “flawed” analysis. Citing state precedent that set out the standards to determine whether a sentence was “grossly disproportionate” to the crime, prosecutors said that Komoroski’s case actually cannot be compared to any other felony DUI cases in the area, according to the station.
It was also “clear to the State and the assembly that the Court was attentive and weighed all the information that was offered,” the filing reportedly said. Lawyers for the state noted that Komoroski’s victims oppose any reduction to 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.”
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