MONROE — Three months after a jury found him guilty of homicide by intoxicated use of a vehicle, Steven Lee Moon was sentenced Feb. 13 to five years in prison and five years on extended supervision for the violent July 2018 crash that killed his friend.

Moon, 56, faced up to 15 years in prison and 10 years on extended supervision.

Assistant District Attorney Laura Kohl argued for a lesser sentence of seven years in prison and five years on extended supervision, but more than the four years in prison recommended by the author of a Department of Corrections pre-sentence investigation report on Moon.

Kohl said she did research several years ago on the range of sentences handed down in similar cases. A handful of defendants she researched got the maximum or close to it because the offenses were clearly extreme examples of reckless, repeat behavior, but the average sentence was five years, she learned.

Moon’s behaviors “are not at the level of some of those high-end outliers, but he does deserve more than the average,” she said.

Kohl said Moon differs from the average in one notable way. The average person who accidentally kills someone while driving under the influence of alcohol “is horrified at what they’ve done.”

“What all of these average people have in common is they at least try to show remorse. I assumed that this defendant would be the same,” she said.

Instead, Moon “blamed” the victim, she said.

Moon testified at trial that his friend and passenger, 54-year-old David Scott Eldred, reached over and grabbed the steering wheel from him in an apparent suicide attempt to crash the vehicle in the early morning hours of July 27, 2018.

“He just told me he didn’t want to be around anymore. ... I was fighting him off. I’m fighting him and trying to see the road,” Moon said. The last thing Moon said he remembered was the sound of grass underneath his 1993 Dodge Dakota as it entered the ditch off Wisconsin 11/81 near County S in Juda.

Eldred was catapulted 72 feet from the spinning truck, passed out “instantly” from a torn aorta and died on scene from internal injuries, an expert witness testified.

The expert, Michael Marquardt, an accident reconstructionist with the Wisconsin State Patrol, said the pickup truck’s tire marks showed it drifted off the road to the right first before being overcorrected to the left, as opposed to a sudden jerk of the steering wheel that would be in keeping with Moon’s narrative. 

A test of Moon’s blood drawn almost three hours after the accident showed he had a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.225%, nearly three times the legal limit for driving.

Moon had every right to “put the state to proof” at trial, Kohl said, but his story of Eldred grabbing the steering wheel to intentionally crash the car was “a lie” and “disgusting display of bad character.”

Four of Eldred’s siblings attended the sentencing. Speaking on their behalf, Kohl said Moon’s lies hurt them and that they knew their brother had “no desire to die.” One sibling noted her brother had cerebral palsy and “did not move well,” so Moon’s assertion that Eldred was able to grab the steering wheel to crash the car “infuriated” her.

Eldred is remembered as happy, honest and straightforward, Kohl said. When he got together with his siblings, they always laughed a lot.

“The defendant took away a lot of laughs,” Kohl said.

Moon’s attorney, John Smerlinski, pushed back on Kohl’s contention that Moon lied or committed “perjury” at trial.

“The prosecution wants to maintain that my client somehow lied,” but there is no proof of that and “there is no indication that that didn’t happen in that vehicle,” he said.

Smerlinksi stressed that it wasn’t a crime of intent.

“The last thing (Moon) wanted to see is his friend die,” he said.

Moon replied “No, sir” when Judge Thomas Vale asked him if he wanted to make a statement to the court.

That troubled Vale. “I would expect someone in your position would have said ‘I’m sorry’ to the family of your victim,” Vale said.

“I anticipate you feel some remorse,” Vale added. Moon nodded. But Moon’s failure to express remorse was problematic for Vale.

“I do have a concern here, Mr. Moon, that you’ve not expressed remorse. I’ve given you a chance to make a statement here today. ... That has not occurred. There seems to be some denial of the seriousness of your addiction, of the control alcohol has in your life,” he said, after quoting from a pre-sentence investigation on Moon that found he was likely to rationalize his criminal behavior and didn’t think he needed help with his drinking.