The five-year prison term handed down last year will not change for the driver of a speeding car who killed a Hillsborough woman in January 2015, an appeals court ruled Wednesday.
This is the third appeal by driver Sahil Kulgod, now 30, in the death of Nancy Louie, a married mother of three.
Kulgod was a 21-year-old college student home on winter break when he lost control of his Ford Focus on Millstone River Road in Hillsborough, careened into oncoming traffic and slammed into a Louie’s vehicle.
The 50-year-old woman died at the scene. Her 20-year-old daughter survived the crash.
Investigators found Kulgod’s speed was 86 miles per hour.
Authorities charged Kulgod, then of Plainsboro, with reckless vehicular homicide and a jury convicted him in September of 2019. A judge sentenced him to five years in prison two months later - which touched off multiple appeals.
(In 2016, Kulgod graduated from college and started working in the auto industry, including working on safety features, the latest appeals decision says.)
In the first appeal, in 2021, an appeals court upheld the conviction, but found inconsistencies in the judge’s explanations of the mitigating and aggravating sentencing factors. They sent it back to the trial judge, who in 2022 resentenced Kulgod, this time to four years in prison, “in the interest of justice.”
The Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office appealed that decision, and on April, 4, 2023, appeals judges wiped out the four-year term and ordered Kulgod be resentenced again, this time by a new judge. (The trial judge is not named in the decisions.)
Those appeals judges found the trial judge erred differently this time, by not providing an explanation for the “interest of justice” downgrade, and not considering the Twitter posts Kulgod made in the months before the crash, in which he brags about speeding over 100 miles per hour.
Coincidentally, Kulgod was released from the state prison system on April 1, 2023, after competing time in a work-release program. As he awaited resentencing last year, Kulgod appealed to the state Supreme Court, but it declined to hear the case.
On August 10, 2023, Somerset County Judge Peter J. Tober presided over Kulgod’s third sentencing and handed down a five-year term. Like the previous two, Tober applied the No Early Release Act provision, which mandates an inmate serve 85% of their sentence before parole eligibility.
That meant Kulgod had to go back to prison. He is currently in a state halfway house in Newark and his term will end in June, records show.
Wednesday’s appeal examined the third sentence.
Kulgod’s lawyer, from the state Public Defender’s Office, made several arguments, including that the appeals court declare “original jurisdiction” and revert his sentence to four years. And the public defender also detailed the hardships on Kulgod’s family and how he’s not been in trouble since the crash.
In the end, Judge Tober got it right, the appeals decision says.
The appeals court acknowledged Kulgod has pursued a career related to automobile safety and has remained free from legal trouble.
“Those circumstances, while commendable, do not satisfy the interests of justice test,” the decision says.
Kulgod’s crime is subject to the five-year NERA term, especially when, as in this case, defendant is subject to enhanced punishment, the decision said.
“We have no basis upon which to reduce the five-year prison term. This time, there was no abuse of sentencing discretion. Nor does the five-year term in any way shock the judicial conscience,” the decision concluded.
Nancy Louie was a native of Taiwan, but lived in New Jersey since 1977. She supported charities and her family remembered her this way: “Nancy’s life would seem too short to many, but those who were touched by her understood that the quality of existence far exceeds the quantity of time in which one lives.”
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Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com.
