Nicole Greco
Criminal Court Judge Rebecca Stern on Monday sentenced Joshua Sides to the maximum 11 years in prison in the traffic death of UTC student Nicole Greco.
The sentence came after emotional testimony from the victim's mother and uncle and after Sides said he has turned around his life while in jail and will speak out against drunk drivers.
A Criminal Court jury in May convicted Sides of a lesser charge in the Oct. 29, 2003, incident on Highway 58. The state had sought a conviction for vehicular homicide by intoxication, which carries 20 years. The jury found him guilty of the lesser included offense of vehicular homicide by reckless conduct. It carries 3-6 years.
Sides was also convicted of third-offense DUI, reckless endangerment and leaving the scene of an accident where a death occurred.
Judge Stern gave Sides the maximum in each case, then ran all of the cases consecutively.
He got 6 years for vehicular homicide by reckless conduct, 2 years for leaving the scene, 2 years for reckless endangerment, and 11 months and 29 days for third-offense DUI.
Judge Stern said, "I do hope he is on his way to rehabilitation, but in the past his behavior has been extremely dangerous and he has been a real threat to the community."
Prosecutor Jay Woods said Sides was on probation at the time of the incident and was due to report to jail the next day on a drunk driving case. He said he was given time to get his affairs in order, and he went out that night and got drunk.
Officer Scott Bales, who was at the scene and was directing traffic, said there was no reason anyone should not have seen there was traffic stalled for a wreck.
He said there was a long straightaway prior to the wreck scene, where Sides plowed into traffic and hit Ms. Greco, who was outside her car after she was involved in a fender bender. Sides fled the scene.
The victim's uncle said he would never forget getting a call from Greco's mother telling of the tragedy. He said she was "a beautiful, intelligent and loving" young woman who had planned to become a teacher. He said the family spent time at her trial in May when she was supposed to be graduating from college.
He said there was "no logical explanation for the rather paltry sentence" given by the jury.
Sides took the witness stand under arrangement where the state was not allowed to cross-examine him. He said, "Remorse and sorrow don't scratch the surface of the feelings I have. I do take responsibility. I have prayed to die."
Sides also said in the written statement, "If I could say I was sorry every day of my life, I know it would not be enough. I wish so much I could change all this."
He said, "All the mistakes I made that night couldn't have been made by a real man."
He said he has had a religious conversion and been teaching and preaching in the jail chapel while "touching many lives."
Sides said he wants to work in the future "spreading the word that it's just not worth it. I will present my life as an example of what not to do." He said he plans to work with MADD and other groups in speaking at schools, churches and elsewhere.
Ms. Greco was a member of Bayside Baptist Church and a 2001 graduate of Central High School where she was a member of the Concert Choir.
She was majoring in early childhood education at UTC and was planning to become a teacher. She was a member of the National Honor Society and Phi Delta Kappa.
She had just gotten off work at KMart at 9 p.m. The woman she hit in the minor wreck was a co-worker in front of her who then hit a third vehicle, who had paused to let another vehicle onto Highway 58, according to witnesses.
The road was under construction and there was only one lane of traffic open northbound at the time.
Ms. Greco had used a cellphone to call her parents about the earlier wreck.
A toxicologist with the TBI said blood drawn from Sides more than eight hours after the accident tested an 0.05 for blood alcohol. A toxicology professor at East Tennessee State University said, based on that, the defendant's blood alcohol level would have been about 0.188 when his pickup his Ms. Greco.
Joshua Sides