Arthur receives 7-year sentence

By KENNETH HART
The Independent

CATLETTSBURG March 13, 2008 10:53 am

— A judge on Wednesday imposed a jury’s recommended sentence for a woman convicted of manslaughter last month in a traffic mishap that claimed the life of a former star athlete at Boyd County High School and Pikeville College.
Boyd Circuit Judge C. David Hagerman sentenced Tracy Dawn Arthur to seven years in prison.
A jury on Feb. 25 convicted Arthur of second-degree manslaughter, concluding that her driving abilities were impaired by a legally prescribed anti-anxiety medication, Xanax, when her sport-utility vehicle veered across the center line of Ky. 5 on July 7 and collided with a car being driven by 23-year-old Travis A. Hall, which was traveling in the opposite direction.
Prior to the sentence being pronounced, Arthur, 34, apologized to the victim’s family members.
“I just want to tell the Hall family that I’m truly sorry,” she said in a tearful voice. “I truly did not intend to do this. I’ll live with this for the rest of my life. Even after my sentence is over, I’ll still have to live with this.”
All three members of the victim’s immediate family — his father, Greg Hall; his mother, Devonna Hall; and his brother, Bryan Hall, gave emotional statements to the court.
“You have not one clue what you’ve done to our family,” Greg Hall said, addressing the defendant directly. “Travis didn’t deserve this. We didn’t deserve this. It was your actions and your actions alone that caused this.”
Travis Hall — the starting first baseman for BCHS’ 1991 state champion baseball team and a four-year starter at Pikeville College — was a “shooting star” who had “no boundaries” on what he could have achieved had his life not been cut tragically short, his father said.
“I know someday I’ll be able to forgive you,” Greg Hall told Arthur. “But, it won’t be today. It might not be a year from now.”
Devonna Hall told Arthur her actions had condemned her family to a lifetime of pain and sorrow.
“We fall into a deeper depression every day,” she said. “You may not believe it here today, but you have a future. We don’t.”
Bryan Hall, 27, a paramedic in Henry County, spoke of being told via telephone by the father of his brother’s friend, Chris Fritz, that Travis Hall had been pronounced dead at the scene of the accident, which occurred on a bridge in the 7100 block of Ky. 5, near Miller’s Market, as Travis Hall and Fritz were en route to a softball game in Hall’s Pontiac G6.
Arthur had just left her grandmother’s house in Westwood, where she was living with her three children, to check on one of her vehicles that had been involved in an accident.
“Travis was going to be such a benefit to society,” Bryan Hall said. “But now we never get to see that potential.”
Arthur stood and looked directly at each of the family members as they spoke and occasionally dabbed at her eyes.
Hagerman told the family it was impossible for him to imagine the pain each of them were experiencing.
“It’s just beyond our ability as human beings to understand why things like this happen to good families,” he said.
Arthur’s attorney, David Mussetter, told Hagerman that under other circumstances, his client might be a good candidate for “alternative sentencing,” given her lack of prior criminal history and her background as a nurse. However, he said that he and Arthur both knew such an arrangement was “not an option” because of the serious nature of the offense and because there was a death involved.
Mussetter said his client wished to be transferred from the Boyd County Detention Center, where she was taken following the guilty verdict in her trial, to a state institution as soon as possible and she hoped to be sent somewhere where she could receive substance-abuse counseling.
According to Mussetter, Arthur developed an addition to painkillers after she was prescribed them to relieve migraine headaches caused by brain lesions. She began taking Xanax, he said, after her husband, Matt, was killed in an ATV accident in March 2006.
Prosecutors presented no evidence at Arthur’s trial that indicated she was abusing her medication at the time of the accident and a blood test performed after the crash showed the level of Xanax in her system was less than half the normal prescription dosage.
However, Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Scott Reese argued Arthur acted in a wanton manner by disregarding the possible side effects of the drug, which include drowsiness, when she got behind the wheel of her vehicle. Reese also maintained that the drug’s effects on her were exacerbated by a lack of sleep.
Under state sentencing guidelines, Arthur will be eligible to meet with the parole board after she has served 20 percent of her sentence — about 17 months. She spent no time in jail prior to her trial, meaning she has only 18 days’ credit for time served.
KENNETH HART can be reached at khart@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2654.

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