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This time, it's prison for teen on probation
By CARY DAVIS, Times Staff Writer NEW PORT RICHEY -- Steven Moschella got one second chance. He did not get a third. In October 2000, Moschella walked out of a courtroom in a double-breasted suit after pleading guilty to shooting and killing his best friend in the Ridgewood High parking lot. Moschella had faced the prospect of a lengthy prison sentence, but a judge decided that Moschella could be rehabilitated. On Wednesday, Moschella was led out of a courtroom in handcuffs, on his way to serve four years in a state prison. Minutes earlier, Moschella pleaded guilty to violating his probation by testing positive for cocaine. The plea came with no promises from Circuit Judge W. Lowell Bray, who rejected without comment Moschella's last-minute appeal for leniency. Bray offered Moschella a similar sentence of four years in prison at a hearing last month. Moschella did not take the offer then, and on Wednesday his public offender called a psychologist to the stand to testify that the 18-year-old would be better off in a residential drug treatment center. "Everybody deserves a second chance," assistant public defender Sara Sanchez argued. "He's a boy in a lot of agony." The psychologist, Richard Carpenter, testified that Moschella suffers from depression and post traumatic stress disorder. Moschella is "guilt-ridden" and "unable to forgive himself," Carpenter said, for accidentally shooting Teddy Niziol on Jan. 19, 2000, as the teens drove away from school. Niziol, 16, died instantly. Moschella turned to cocaine as a form of self-medication after prescribed anti-depressant drugs didn't help, Carpenter said. A random drug screen in early March found traces of cocaine in Moschella's urine. That violated the conditions of his house arrest. "You don't self-medicate," said prosecutor Mike Halkitis, who argued for a prison sentence because Moschella "already was given a second chance." Moschella faced up to six years in prison when he pleaded guilty to manslaughter by culpable negligence 17 months ago. Circuit Judge Craig C. Villanti sentenced Moschella to 60 days in jail, which he served over school holidays, followed by house arrest and probation. In a statement he read to the judge at Wednesday's hearing, Moschella repeated much of what he said in an anti-gun videotape he made for the school district. He finished his statement by saying: "Maybe I do deserve to go to prison, but I don't think two wrongs make a right." Afterward, in an impromptu news conference in a courtroom hallway, Moschella's mother reacted angrily to the sentence. "I don't understand," said Pam Wimmer. "I don't approve of what Steven has done . . . But I can't see him getting a lot of help where he's fixing to go."
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From today's Pasco Times Editorial Letters |
