The Naperville man sentenced to seven years in prison for killing a teenage girl while driving drunk and high says the penalty is too stiff and does not reflect factors like his potential to be rehabilitated, documents filed in DuPage County Court say.
A motion filed Thursday on behalf of Joseph Kucharski, 53, asks that Judge Alex McGimpsey reconsider the sentence he handed down in July after Kucharski pleaded guilty to aggravated DUI involving a death.
The former real estate agent was found to have a .031 blood alcohol level and cocaine and prescription drugs in his system on the morning of Feb. 19, 2019, when he was driving in the wrong lane and went through a red light, striking 17-year-old Elizabeth Dunlap as she crossed the street in front of Downers Grove North High School, police reports said.
Dunlap, a standout volleyball player at the school, died a few days later.
Prosecutors said Kucharski had been using crack cocaine the four days prior to the crash and police found two crack pipes, crack cocaine, a half-empty bottle of vodka and evidence that he had driven to Chicago to buy crack the day before the crash.
Under the terms of the sentence, Kucharski must serve 85 percent of the seven-year prison term. The DuPage County State’s Attorney’s Office had asked for 14 years, the maximum allowed.
In the new court motion, Kucharski attorney Rick Kayne asked the judge to impose a lesser term because of mitigating factors and what Kayne called Kucharski’s rehabilitative potential.
The seven-year term was excessive and a violation of Kucharski’s Constitutional rights, the motion said.
“The remorsefulness of the defendant and the rehabilitative potential of the defendant should warrant a lesser sentence and also meet the ends of justice,” Kayne wrote in his motion.
The judge set a Sept. 17 hearing date. According to the Illinois Department of Corrections. Kucharski was remanded into state custody Wednesday.
While he was out of jail on $75,000 bond awaiting trial, Kucharski checked into an addiction treatment center and was residing in a sober living facility. In May 2019, his bond was increased by $25,000 after prosecutors learned that despite a judge’s mandate that he have no contact with the Dunlap family, a friend of Kucharski reached out to them on his behalf to express his remorse, court records said.
Clifford Ward is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.
