Trucker’s 110-year sentence reduced to 10 after clemency campaign – National & International News – FRI 31Dec2021

Trucker’s 110-year sentence reduced to 10 after clemency campaign. Over 1 million have died of overdoses since opioid epidemic began. US, EU call for arms embargo to Myanmar after massacre.

NATIONAL NEWS

Trucker’s 110-year sentence reduced to 10 after clemency campaign

In October, trucker Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, 26, was convicted of four counts of vehicular homicide for his role in a 2019 collision in Colorado. Aguilera-Mederos says that the brakes on his rig failed and caused him to crash into several other vehicles. This led to a 26-vehicle pile up that left four dead. Because of Colorado’s peculiar mandatory minimum laws that require offenders to serve certain types of sentences consecutively, Aguilera-Mederos received a 110-year sentence.

After the court confirmed the sentence earlier this month, more than 5 million people signed a Change.org petition seeking clemency for Aguilera-Mederos. Yesterday, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis commuted Aguilera-Mederos’ sentence to 10 years. 

Polis wrote to Aguilera-Mederos, “I believe you deserve clemency for several reasons. You were sentenced to 110 years in prison, effectively more than a life sentence, for a tragic but unintentional act”. The new sentence means that Aguilera-Mederos will be eligible for parole in 5 years.

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Over 1 million have died of overdoses since opioid epidemic began

According to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, 932,364 people in the U.S. died from drug overdoses from 1999 through 2020. And preliminary data suggests that an additional 100,000 have died just this year. That means that this year more than doubled the yearly average over the previous 21 years.

The most vulnerable age group of 35–44-year-olds saw a 33% increase in deaths from 2019 to 2020. In 2020, overdose death among young people (15-24 years) rose 49%.

The opioid crisis had its start in the 1990s when pharmaceutical companies like Purdue (makers of Oxycontin) began marketing their opioid drugs aggressively and deceptively. In more recent years, the biggest killers have been illicit drugs cocaine and methamphetamine, sometimes laced with fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid.

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

US, EU call for arms embargo to Myanmar after massacre

On Christmas Eve, soldiers of Myanmar’s military junta carried out a massacre in which at least 35 civilians were killed. Soldiers shot several civilians and arrested others fleeing a combat zone in Kayah state in three large trucks. They then piled the dead bodies on the trucks and set them alight. In the aftermath, two workers from international aid organization Save the Children were missing.

The junta, known as the Tatmadaw, has been carrying out such massacres in the country’s border regions for the past year. Soldiers sweep into rural villages, round up and kill the men, then set fire to the village. Dozens of such attacks have taken place since the summer.

Despite the international outcry over the Christmas Eve massacre, it’s unlikely that international arms sales to the Tatmadaw will cease any time soon. In June, the UN General Assembly proposed an arms embargo, but the UN Security Council did not take it up. China, Russia and India are Myanmar’s biggest arms suppliers. China and Russia have veto power on the Security Council.

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