‘Melrose Place’ actress got off easy for fatal drunk-driving crash: judge

SOMERVILLE, N.J. – A judge admitted on Friday he erred when sentencing a former “Melrose Place” actress for a deadly 2010 drunken-driving crash.

Somerset County Superior Court Judge Robert Reed said actress Amy Locane-Bovenizer should’ve served an additional six months, according to NJ.com.

“That was my error,” he said during a tense status conference on her Dec. 2 resentencing hearing.

He said he will consider her post-conviction behaviour in the resentencing.

The actress was convicted of vehicular manslaughter, assault by auto and other offences and faced a sentencing range of five to 10 years on the most serious count. Her defence had argued the crash was an accident.

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A state appeals court in July ruled the judge must offer a more detailed justification for why he downgraded Locane-Bovenizer’s sentence to three years.

The actress was allowed to be eligible for parole after serving 85 per cent of her sentence, and she was released from prison last year after serving 2 1/2 years. The judge now says she should have served the whole three years under sentencing guidelines.

Assistant prosecutor Matthew Murphy said on Friday he recognized the judge’s error at the time but decided to file an appeal rather than correct him on the spot.

Murphy said it was the initial light sentence, not the failure to add six months, that angered the prosecution and the family of the woman killed in the crash and caused the state’s Appellate Division to ask the judge to explain his reasoning.

Locane-Bovenizer appeared in 13 episodes of TV’s “Melrose Place” and in movies including “Cry-Baby,” “School Ties” and “Secretary.”

At her February 2013 sentencing, the judge sentenced her below the prescribed range, citing the hardship on her two young children, one of whom has a serious medical and mental disability.

The sentence outraged friends and relatives of the victim, 60-year-old Helen Seeman, and the state appealed the sentence shortly after.