PORTLAND, Maine — The Oxford woman convicted last year of manslaughter and leaving the scene of an accident in which two teens died will begin serving her sentence next week after the Maine Supreme Judicial Court unanimously denied her appeal Thursday, according to her attorney.
Kristina Lowe, 22, was sentenced in October 2014 to eight years in prison with all but 18 months suspended after a trial in Oxford County Superior Court. She has been free since then on bail pending the appeal.
Justices heard oral arguments in the case in June at the Penobscot Judicial Center in Bangor.
“We fought as hard as possible on her behalf,” her attorney, James Howaniec of Lewiston, said. “We continue to believe in her innocence but the law court has spoken and she will surrender herself for incarceration on Wednesday.”
Efforts to reach Joseph O’Connor, assistant district attorney for Oxford County were unsuccessful Thursday.
Media reports before the trial said Lowe had been texting when she lost control of her 2002 Subaru Impreza in the early morning hours of Jan. 7, 2012, on Route 219 in West Paris, and went 60 feet off the road and crashed into some trees. Testimony at the trial showed Lowe had been at a party prior to the accident and received a text “at the instant of the accident” but never replied to it, her attorney wrote.
Oxford Hills teens Rebecca Mason, 16, and Logan Dam, 19, who were passengers in Lowe’s vehicle, died in the crash.
Howaniec argued in his brief that jurors, who found Lowe not guilty on two counts of aggravated operating while under the influence of intoxicants, wrongly found her guilty of the other charges.
Justice Jeffrey Hjelm, who wrote the 22-page decision for the court, rejected that argument.
“Although there was conflicting evidence, the jury could rationally have concluded that Lowe had consumed alcohol and drugs at the party before the crash and that Lowe knew before she got behind the wheel that she was too drunk to drive,” he wrote. “The jury also could have found that Lowe looked at a text message on her phone while she was driving, causing her to drift off the road.
“Finally, the jury was entitled to accept expert testimony that Lowe, a young and relatively inexperienced driver, was driving 75 miles per hour on a two-lane road where the speed limit was only 50 miles per hour and when it was dark and potentially icy,” Hjelm concluded. “The combination of these factors supports the jury’s finding that Lowe’s conduct was ‘a gross deviation’ from the standard of care exercised by a reasonable person in her situation and that she therefore acted recklessly or with criminal negligence when the crash occurred.”