Man gets four years, eight months prison for fatal 101 crash

In the early morning of Oct. 5, 2013, Katz was spotted by a California Highway Patrol officer driving the wrong way onto southbound Highway 101 near South San Francisco. He then crashed head-on into a Ford Escape taxi that had a driver and two passengers inside at Sierra Point Parkway, according to prosecutors.

Pedro Soldevilla, 62, of Puerto Rico, was ejected and died at the scene. The other passenger was also ejected and suffered major injuries, while the driver suffered a broken foot, prosecutors said.

Katz was trapped in his car but was eventually extricated and a test at the hospital a couple of hours later found he had a blood-alcohol content of 0.13, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

The case was delayed for two years over appeals regarding whether the blood test was admissible in court, with defense attorney Geoff Carr arguing that Katz did not receive any admonition regarding his right to refuse the test without a warrant.

Carr argued that a U.S. Supreme Court ruling requiring police to obtain a warrant or receive consent from a suspect before obtaining blood tests in DUI cases should have kept that evidence out of the courtroom in Katz’s case. He said previously the state Court of Appeal disagreed, allowing the blood test evidence to be presented in the trial, which took place in the fall. Though Carr was seeking probation for his client, he noted his client did not receive the prosecution’s desired sentence nor the maximum sentence, which he said was 12 years in prison.

“That’s a minor league victory for us,” he said. “I thought [Judge Davis] thought about it hard and made a difficult decision which was fair.”

Katz, who was a Stanford Graduate School of Business student, was joined by his parents Friday and was allowed to have a few minutes with them by Davis before they left the courtroom. Katz was remanded into custody after he had been out on $250,000 bail when he was convicted Nov. 17, and will receive 63 days credit for time served, according to prosecutors.

District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said was pleased with the judge’s sentence and to see a yearslong case finally come to a close.

“This was a very just sentence from Judge Davis because the victim’s family has lost their son forever,” he said. “The Katz family will get their son back in a couple years.”

anna@smdailyjournal.com

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