Sentence right in fatal crash

A district court judge has managed to salvage justice in a botched DWI case. Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer sentenced Juan de Dios Cordova to 29 years in jail Monday for the death of an Albuquerque motorcyclist. Cordova was found guilty of driving the pickup that struck and killed Mark Wolfe last May on the high road to Taos.

The sentence is appropriate — Cordova is a multiple DWI offender who fled the scene of the crash. And it redeems an investigation of the case that was fraught with problems: loss of the key piece of evidence — the truck that killed Wolfe — when a tow yard operator crushed it for scrap; a Cordova blood sample to check for alcohol content that was stored in a home refrigerator; and rewrites of a deputy’s report.

But Rio Arriba County sheriff’s deputies did get to Cordova quickly after Wolfe was hit, and he told them his truck had been stolen — unprompted and even before the deputies had a chance to ask him anything about a truck or a fatal crash.

And Cordova had the keys to the truck in his pocket.

A jury cut through the mistakes and saw the obvious: Cordova was driving the truck and he was drunk when he veered over the center line on N.M. 76 and struck Wolfe and his wife on their motorcycle. Wolfe was dead at the scene, his wife was severely injured, and others riding with them also were injured.

As a result of Marlowe Sommer’s sentence, if Cordova wants to appeal he’ll have to do it from prison. Good — he’s off the road, at least, in the interim.

We can only hope that others heed the judge’s actions. As the prosecutor put it Monday, if you drive drunk, you’d better be prepared to pay the consequences.

In the case of Cordova, who is 57, the consequences amount to a life sentence.