A car is a deadly weapon

THERESA SAUTTER cringes every time she hears that another person has been killed by a driver - especially when the victim is young or the driver flees, as was the case when her daughter Marylee Otto was hit and killed on a Northeast Philly street last year.

Sautter has launched what sometimes seems like a one-woman campaign to get the state Legislature to pass a bill that would raise the mandatory-minimum sentence for someone who flees the scene of an accident.

She has spoken to or tried to contact politicians, including state Sen. Michael Stack, who sponsored the bill, Mayor Nutter and Gov. Rendell. She's thinking of getting in touch with U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter.

She and Marylee's friends continue to pass out petitions for people who support the bill to sign. She is planning a march to City Hall next month to raise awareness of the issue.

It can get frustrating.

"It just feels like when you don't have people on your side with this whole issue, and the politicians are just, you know, treading water on this, they're not taking the time to sit and think that this is becoming a problem, it just makes you feel like, what do you have to do?" said Sautter, 41, as she sat on a curb near Rhawn Street and Lexington Avenue last week.

At that intersection, her 15-year-old daughter was hit by driver Michelle Johnson, who was a registered nurse in the Philadelphia Prison System.

"You have to constantly, constantly keep on them, you have to constantly, constantly call them," Sautter said, as cars whirred past. "They probably think you're the biggest pain, but, at the same time, you have to do something, or otherwise it's never going to change, and more people are going to end up dying."

Aa about 11 p.m. March 28, 2008, Marylee had been crossing Rhawn Street at Lexington when Johnson hit her.

Marylee's friends, who were there, maintain that Johnson swerved around another vehicle and ran a red light.

Assistant District Attorney Leon Goodman has said that another witness - a co-worker of Johnson's, who had been driving behind Johnson - said that she did not run a red light and did not swerve around another car, but swerved to avoid Marylee's friends, who were on the grassy side, off the road.

Goodman said that, according to the witness, Marylee's friends were close to the road and that Johnson shifted toward the center of the road, hitting Marylee.

Sautter believes Marylee's friends' version. She said that Johnson hit Marylee with such force that her body apparently rolled onto the SUV, then rolled onto the Rhawn Street Bridge, about 25 to 30 feet away.

Earlier that night, Marylee and her friends had gone to see a movie at the Neshaminy Mall, in Bensalem. They took a bus back to Roosevelt Boulevard, and from there Marylee had been walking to a friend's house for a sleepover.

Johnson, then employed by Tennessee-based Prison Health Services, was on her way to work as a nurse at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, on State Road. She fled after hitting the teen. She did not get out of her Toyota Sequoia SUV, which Sautter said was leased, and did not check on Marylee.

In a negotiated deal in October, Johnson pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death, and in return was sentenced to the mandatory-minimum term of one to two years in state prison.

With credit for time served in Philadelphia and Bucks County prisons after her arrest, Johnson's one-year minimum is approaching in September. Meanwhile, she is trying to get released from state prison to a community corrections center before the year is up.

Sautter is outraged by that, too.

"Why would she be entitled to any privileges?" Sautter said.

Sautter wants the state Legislature to pass Senate Bill 522, which would increase the mandatory-minimum sentence for someone who flees the scene of an accident resulting in death to a minimum of five years.

"My thing is, they make a huge deal out of the illegal handguns in the city and people getting killed by handguns," she said. "And people just are oblivious to the fact that people are getting killed weekly or injured on a weekly basis by people driving cars.

"I understand people have accidents, but a lot of them are in careless manners. It's one thing if it's an accident. But when you leave the scene of an accident knowing what you did, that's just as bad as shooting someone with a gun and leaving. And the reason people do it so much is because the sentences are so small."

She added: "It's not a gun, but you know, an automobile is a deadly weapon."

Stack, a Democrat who represents parts of Northeast Philadelphia, Kensington and Port Richmond, said in interviews last month that he plans to hold a public hearing in Northeast Philadelphia about the issue later this summer or in early fall to try to garner more support for the bill.

The bill is currently in the Transportation Committee and has not yet been voted on.

He said that he first wants to get his colleagues on board to "dramatically increase the penalties," but added that he is open to amending the bill to have some room for "reasonableness or compassion" for drivers who make an honest mistake.

"This is a tough bill," he said.

The Daily News called senators on the Transportation Committee and on the Law and Justice Committee - on which Stack sits - who are not yet co-sponsors of the bill, to find out where they stand.

Sen. Jane Earll, R-Erie County, said that she would oppose the bill because she opposes "mandatory sentences across the board" and believes that judges should be able to fashion a sentence based on the guideline range and the facts in a case.

Other senators, including Sen. J. Barry Stout, a Democrat who represents counties in the southwestern part of the state, support the bill. "A person is supposed to stop" to render aid to a victim, Stout said.

Adam Pankake, a legislative assistant for Sen. Gene Yaw, a Republican who represents counties in north-central Pennsylvania, said that Yaw will support the bill although he generally doesn't like mandatory-minimum sentences. Sen. Lisa Boscola's chief of staff, Bernie Kieklak, and Sen. Richard Kasunic's spokesman, Will Dando, both said that they expect their employers to support the bill.

These senators did not return calls seeking comment: Richard Alloway II, Joseph Scarnati III, Charles McIlhinney Jr., John Pippy, Robert Wonderling, Donald White, John Gordner and Robert Tomlinson.

Prosecutor Goodman and Ed McCann, chief of the D.A.'s Homicide Unit, said that they support increasing the mandatory-minimum sentence for someone fleeing the scene of a deadly accident.

McCann noted that the current maximum sentence someone can face for the third-degree felony is 3 1/2 to seven years in prison. If the Legislature were to increase the mandatory-minimum to five years, he said, it also would have to make the offense a second-degree felony.

McCann declined to comment on why his office agreed to the plea deal for Johnson, which included withdrawing other charges against her, and why prosecutors didn't push for a heftier sentence. He noted that without the mandatory-minimum, a judge could have sentenced Johnson to probation or to less jail time.

Johnson, of Lawrence Street near Nedro Avenue, in Olney, did not have a prior-arrest record.

Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner, who accepted the negotiated sentence for Johnson, said last month that he "definitely" does not feel that it's necessary to increase mandatory-minimum sentences.

"Increasing mandatory-minimum sentences is a generally politically popular, but an ineffective way to deal with something someone doesn't like," he said. "We have too many mandatory-minimum sentences already. . . . It's not fair to say one size fits all."

Lerner added: "In my view, it's a bad idea to have this automatic knee-jerk reaction." Mandatory-minimums could end up affecting "a whole bunch of cases" with different circumstances, he said.

Johnson's attorney, Mark Keenheel, declined to comment for this article.

Sautter would like Mayor Nutter, Gov. Rendell and other politicians to speak out about increasing the penalty.

Luke Butler, a Nutter spokesman, said last month that the mayor believes that motorists should not leave an accident scene, but would need to analyze the proposed bill's impact on the criminal-justice system before saying where he stands on the bill. Later, Butler said that he had a "further chat with the mayor" and that Nutter expressed support for the bill.

Chuck Ardo, Rendell's spokesman, said that the governor has no problem with a five-year mandatory minimum, but noted that Rendell would have to see the specifics of the bill.

In a letter to the D.A.'s Office last month, the State Correctional Institution at Cambridge Springs, where Johnson, 41, is housed, noted that she has applied for "pre-release consideration."

Amy Boylan, spokeswoman for the minimum-security women's prison in Crawford County, said that pre-release means that an inmate is seeking to be sent to a state-run community corrections center. Inmates need to be approved for this, and "not everyone would be eligible," she said.

The letter to the D.A.'s Office, obtained by the Daily News, says that Johnson has received above-average evaluations from her laundry-work supervisor and from her housing-unit officers, and that she has completed sessions on victim awareness, "Thinking for a Change" and "New Choices/New Options."

Susan McNaughton, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, said that inmates who are pre-released to a community corrections center can get an outside job. But she noted that their whereabouts would be monitored. The center would be a "halfway house" to help transition inmates before they are released back into society, she said.

Both Boylan and McNaughton said that inmates sent to a community corrections center are still considered "incarcerated."

Goodman said that the D.A.'s Office has written a letter to the prison objecting to Johnson's pre-release request and has requested that Johnson serve her two-year maximum.

Sautter, her other children and Marylee's friends have set up a memorial on the edge of Pennypack Park, right by the crash site. Yellow geraniums bloom there, and flower pinwheels twirl.

Meriam Rauscher, 42, approached a reporter last month at the memorial and said that she had heard Johnson's SUV hit Marylee. "I heard this big thud, and her body landed at the bridge. I thought, 'Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Who would do this?' "

She added: "She [Johnson] killed that girl and kept going. If I hit a squirrel, I would stop."

Sautter said that she still is considering a lawsuit against Johnson.

Last week, as she and her two younger children, Skylar, 6, and Brad, 14, looked over Marylee's memorial, Sautter said that she had learned from Allstate Insurance Co. that Johnson was driving without insurance the night that she killed Marylee.

Allstate spokesman Brett Ludwig confirmed that Johnson had been a customer but did not have auto insurance with the company in March 2008. He would not say when her insurance ended or why, citing privacy concerns.

Sautter also recounted the story of a squirrel that they recently buried at the memorial site. The squirrel was hit by a vehicle near the Northeast Philadelphia home where her family now lives, she said. It then fell from a tree and died.

"The squirrel's buried here because Mary always liked the little animals," said Sautter, who had worked as a veterinary technician and has rescued animals. Marylee also rescued animals.

A few days before the squirrel died, Sautter said, her kids' hamster, Hammy, died. They buried her with Marylee in Hillside Cemetery, in Montgomery County.

Every time she hears of someone being killed by a driver, Sautter said, "it just brings back the night I got that phone call [from Marylee's friend telling me that Marylee had been hit], and then it just makes me think that another family's got to go through the same horrible sense of loss."

She added: "It's like you've already been kicked in the stomach, but every time you hear [of another pedestrian being killed by a driver], it's like, 'Not again!' "

She was devastated, she said, when she heard of the three young girls and the mother who died after being hit by a driver allegedly fleeing police last month at 3rd and Annsbury streets, in Feltonville.

According to Philadelphia police statistics compiled a few days after the June 10 Feltonville crash, 14 pedestrians have been killed this year in auto accidents, and in three of those cases the driver fled the scene. Last year, 38 pedestrians died in vehicle accidents, and in nine of those cases the driver fled the scene.

"Hopefully, the governor will get off his chair and do something about the problem," Sautter said. "And the Senate will hopefully pass the [bill] to make the laws tougher."