VooDoo works on barbecue, too
January 7, 2014
Carla Bernard Sapia
January 8, 2014
An 18-year-old Nicholls State University freshman was sentenced to 3 years supervised probation – and a 5-year suspended prison sentence – after pleading guilty to vehicular homicide in a Houma courtroom Monday.
Katelyn Marie Duplantis admitted she had been drinking before she briefly drove a friend’s golf cart on a Bourg Highway at about 2:20 a.m. on May 5. Cleveland “Chris” Towns, a 63-year-old engineer, swerved to avoid the golf cart, which had no lights, and struck a tree with his vehicle. He died of traumatic injuries at a New Orleans hospital.
Relatives of Towns were told by authorities Duplantis would not likely receive jail time.
Prosecutors acknowledged that while Duplantis should have to answer for Towns’ death, it was questionable under the circumstances whether pressing for imprisonment and interruption of her education would serve justice.
Towns’ widow, Laura Browning of Montegut, watched Monday as Duplantis stood impassively before District Judge George Larke at Monday’s sentencing hearing.
She was not surprised by the sentence.
“We had a lot of discussions of what our standards are for this type of charge,” Browning said. “Given the circumstances we were told this would probably be the sentence. She has pled guilty and been sentenced for that. Is the sentence as profound as I would like it to be for taking another person’s life? No. But she has pled guilty and has been sentenced and that part of justice was carried out. I would have preferred a sentence more appropriate for the consequences, for the loss of a life.”
Browning said she saw no expression of remorse, and was distressed by that.
The widow said she received a small degree of comfort by the judge’s decision to impose three rather than two years probation – his initial inclination for sentencing.
Larke said he was adding a year because of effects the victim impact statements filed by Browning and others close to Towns had on him.
Duplantis was attending a party with teens who, like her, were pending South Terrebonne High School graduates the night of the wreck.
A lawsuit for civil damages against Duplantis as well as the family whose home the party was held in, Michael and Glenda DeRoche, is still pending.
Lafourche Parish District Attorney Cam Morvant prosecuted the case and appeared in Larke’s Houma courtroom. Some members of Terrebonne District Attorney Joe Waitz Jr.’s staff were too close to Duplantis and friends of her family, creating the impression of a conflict of interest. That resulted in Waitz asking Morvant to handle it instead.
Duplantis
