Man who killed 3 in 2016 Thanksgiving day crash must be resentenced

The Pennsylvania Superior Court said Tuesday that an Allegheny County Common Pleas judge erred when he did not sentence the man convicted of killing a family of three in a fiery Thanksgiving Day crash in 2016 to a mandatory term of life in prison.

Demetrius Coleman, 26, who is being house at the State Correctional Institution at Albion, must be resentenced, the appellate court found on Tuesday.

According to the prosecution, he fled from a traffic stop in North Versailles about 2:15 p.m. on Nov. 24, 2016.

At times reaching speeds of 100 mph, Coleman slammed into a Ford Taurus on Route 30. Killed in the crash were Kaylie Meininger, her fiancé, David Bianco, and their 2-year-old daughter, Annika.

The prosecution tried Coleman on criminal homicide charges in March 2019 and the jury found him guilty of three counts of third-degree murder.

Prior to sentencing, the prosecution filed a notice of intent to seek a mandatory life prison term against Coleman. The law allows such a penalty when a person is convicted of a second or subsequent conviction for third-degree murder.

In Coleman’s case, the district attorney’s office argued that the conviction in Meininger’s and Annika’s deaths were subsequent to Bianco’s.

The defense objected, arguing that such a penalty was unconstitutional because the jury was not asked to make such a factual finding. In addition, Coleman argued that the statute was designed to punish recidivism, and that the crash deaths were unintentional and happened simultaneously.

The trial judge, Common Pleas Judge David R. Cashman, rejected the prosecution’s motion, calling it “illogical” and “ludicrous.”

He sentenced Coleman to 70 to 140 years in prison.

In its opinion on Tuesday, the Superior Court wrote that its own precedent requires the mandatory life prison term.

The statute, the court wrote, “requires a trial court to impose a sentence of life imprisonment when a defendant, who has been convicted of third-degree murder, had also ‘previously been convicted at any time of murder or voluntary manslaughter.’”

Citing the presidential case, the court wrote that the phrase “at any time” is dispositive.

“‘The statute does not state that the two murders must be tried and sentenced separately,’” the earlier opinion said. “Further, the statute does not make any distinction between convictions that arise from a single criminal episode and multiple criminal episodes.

“We are bound by the unambiguous language of this statute and we cannot insert additional requirements that the legislature has not included,” the court wrote.

The Superior Court remanded the case to Cashman for resentencing.