Emotional sentencing brings Michael case to a close

Aimee Michael stood in front of a packed courtroom and cried. The judge cried. And a tragedy on multiple fronts came to an end Thursday when Michael was handed a 50-year prison sentence for causing, then fleeing, a 2009 Easter Sunday crash that killed five people, three of them children.

In court, Michael, 24, spoke publicly for the first time since her BMW collided with a Mercedes, setting off a deadly chain-reaction accident on Camp Creek Parkway in Southwest Atlanta.

“I want to say I am wrong,” she said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I have wronged three families, and for that I am sorry.”

Judge Kimberly M. Esmond Adams, who delivered Michael’s punishment, called this the hardest case she’d ever dealt with — and she suggested that the children killed in the crash had become angels at the moment of their deaths.

“It was by far the most tragic case I have ever seen,” said Adams, a former prosecutor, as her voice wavered and her eyes filled with tears.

Before that accident, Michael was just another college graduate, contemplating her future. But on Easter Sunday, as Michael set out to buy ice cream at a Publix store, her car swerved out of control and hit a Mercedes along Camp Creek Parkway in southwest Atlanta.

The Mercedes collided head-on with a Volkswagen Beetle.

Robert Carter, the driver of the Mercedes, and his wife, Delisia Carter, were killed. So, too, was Ethan Carter, their 2-month-old son and Kayla Lemons, Delisia’s 9-year-old daughter.

In the Volkswagen, Morgan Johnson, 6, died.

For the next 10 days, police would search frantically for the gold BMW, using pieces of the car that were ripped away in the crash to identify it. Finally, based on tips from neighbors, an officer found it in the driveway of the family’s south Fulton County home, its body repaired and smelling of fresh paint.

Micheal told investigators she had considered turning herself in several times but her mom stopped her. She also called 911 twice, but hung up.

Michael was raised in Philadelphia and attended the University of Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania.

She had future plans, even applying to graduate school at Wake Forest University within a week after the accident.

But the Easter Sunday accident wasn’t the first time that Michael had been in trouble behind the wheel.

That, mixed with admitted recreational drug use, might have been a hint of disastrous things to come.

At the University of Pittsburgh, where she graduated in 2008 with a psychology degree, Michael collected four speeding tickets — three in two months — plus a stop sign violation, according to Pennsylvania court records.

On Thursday, Prosecutor Tanya Miller revealed what the judge had kept from jurors: Police found a “marijuana cigar” in the ashtray of the BMW that contained Michael’s DNA. It wasn’t presented at trial because police had no evidence linking it to Michael at the time of the crash, and the judge ruled that it would have been prejudicial for the jury.

“What that does tell us is that she smokes marijuana in the car, in all likelihood while driving,” Miller said.

Then, there was this: In psychological evaluation, Michael admitted that she’d been a steady marijuana user since her teens.

Michael, according to Pennsylvania records obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, also liked to drive fast — too fast.

On Feb. 2, 2007, she was stopped in Blair County, about 100 miles east of Pittsburgh, going 75 mph in a 65-mph zone.

Just a week later, on Feb. 9, 2007, she was pulled over for doing 89 in a 65 in Columbia County, Pa.

Michael paid fines of $137 and $80, respectively, for the traffic violations, and, according to Pennsylvania Department of Transportation regulations, had seven points put on her driving record.

Under Pennsylvania Department of Transportation rules, any driver who gains more than six points on his or her driver’s license must take a safe driving class within 30 days or risk having the license suspended.

It’s unclear if Michael attended the class, but on March 31, 2007, she was cited again for speeding, this time traveling 86 mph in a 65 zone.

The citation cost her $173 and four more points against her license, which could have led to a 15-day suspension.

Citing privacy laws, officials in Pennsylvania, though, declined to confirm whether Michael had taken the mandatory class or had any license suspension.

She had other infractions, as well.

She had been stopped back on Sept. 4, 2006 for traveling 75 mph in a 65-mph zone in Bedford County, Pa.

And she was pulled over on April 17, 2008, by University of Pittsburgh police for failing to obey a stop sign.

After that, Michael moved to Atlanta, living with her parents. Her father is a military man; her mother a school teacher.

And while she was here, she maintained a clean driving record. That is, until that day on April 12, 2009.

During Thursday’s emotional hearing, mother and daughter sat side-by-side, wearing identical blue prison jumpsuits.

Her mother, who pleaded guilty on Oct. 15, was sentenced to eight years in prison for not turning her daughter in to police.

They each apologized for their actions.

Sheila Michael, 53, apologized to the victims for any “undue grief” her cover-up caused.

“That was not my intention,” she said.

Her daughter, Aimee, apologized to her mother and to “everybody that I have let down.”

“I apologize to the Carter family, and I apologize to the Johnson family,” Michael said. “Not a day goes by that I don’t wish that your family was here and not me. Not a day goes by that I don’t pray for your comfort and your peace.”

Aimee Michael’s father, Robert, had been silent throughout the trial. A former Marine, he was in the Middle East working for the Department of Defense when the crash occurred.

“I feel that if I was here, in country, at the time, all this never would have taken place,” he told the judge. “I can assure you of that.”

Like many others, Adams, the judge, said that she, too, wondered how things might have turned out if Michael stayed on the scene of the crash — or at least turned herself in soon after.

For the last few days, Adams had been consumed with reaching a fair sentence, and before heading to court Thursday morning, she prayed.

“I can tell you Ms. Michael, the one thing that I could not get out of my mind was that you left the scene of the crime,” Adams said.

Fatal crashes, the judge said, occur all the time. “But what ultimately matters is what you do when something like that happens.”

Under the sentence handed down Thursday, Michael will have to serve 36 years in prison.

Adams showed the least mercy to Michael’s mother: She sentenced Sheila Michael to the maximum eight years in prison for failing to turn her daughter in to police — more than even prosecutors had recommended.

She told Sheila Michael that when she conspired in the “selfish” cover up, she “inflicted more pain on families that already had experienced the most pain imaginable.”

Staff writer Ty Tagami and photographer Bob Andres contributed to this article.

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