Charlotte DePersia and the car wreck
Charlotte DePersia, the prominent East Hampton broker who was arrested on charges of driving while intoxicated and aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle last November, was sentenced to probation and community service yesterday despite the protests of her crash victims, Patch reported.
At the sentencing, DePersia, who admitted all blame for swerving into the right lane of traffic on Montauk Highway in Bridgehampton near midnight on the night, striking the driver’s side of a BMW in the adjacent lane, was sentenced to 840 hours of community service to be completed during the five years of her probation, Patch said. She will also be required to submit to drug tests and wear an alcohol monitoring device.
The sentence, issued by Judge William Condon, fell far short of what the Suffolk County district’s attorney’s office had sought.
“Ms. DePersia, all these people want me to incarcerate you, and they’re not wrong,” the judge said, after listening to testimony from the victims. But in the end, he conceded that DePersia’s time in an alcohol rehabilitation facility may have been beneficial: “I think the Charlotte DePersia that is standing before me today is not the Charlotte DePersia that was driving that night,” he said.
Others disagreed: “I don’t buy her staged remorse,” said Karyn Scholack, a New Jersery-native who was in the crash. “Charlotte’s life continued without skipping a beat.” [Patch]
