The alleged illegal immigrant charged with killing a Marine and his date in a drunken-driving collision on Thanksgiving Day 2006 again will plead guilty to two counts of negligent manslaughter, his attorney said Wednesday.
Eduardo Morales-Soriano, 27, of Laurel, had a blood alcohol content of .32 percent ? four times the legal limit ? when his Nissan Sentra hit a Toyota Corolla driven by Jennifer Bower, 24, ofMontgomery Village, who was stopped at a red light at the intersection of Routes 175 and 108 in Columbia, according to charging documents. Bower and her passenger, Cpl. Brian Mathews, 21, of Columbia, were killed.
“We?re going to enter a guilty plea on May 28 and try to put this behind Mr. Morales-Soriano once and for all,” defense attorney Bradley Goldbloom said.
“I thought the last plea agreement was appropriate, and even sort of heavy-handed at that, but it looks like we will be reaching a plea agreement that is different and probably a longer period of incarceration for him.”
He declined to discuss the terms of the new plea agreement.
Prosecutors reached a plea agreement with Morales-Soriano in September in which they capped sentencing at eight years in prison and permitted Goldbloom to argue for a lighter sentence.
But Howard Circuit Judge Lenore Gelfman rejected the agreement in January, saying it was not “adequate” given the severity of the charges.
Gelfman?s decision sent the case back to trial and shocked the victims? family members who were expecting closure. Morales-Soriano now could face up to 20 years in prison and will enter his guilty plea before Howard Circuit Judge Louis Becker.
“I do not anticipate that we?re going to run into the same situation,” Goldbloom said.
Mathews, a 2003 Howard High School graduate, served eight months in Iraq and had returned home for the holidays. He was on a date with Bower, who was studying to be a licensed counselor, according to court records. The case has raised issues of whether Maryland should issue driver?s licenses without proof of legal residency. Authorities said they believe Morales-Soriano entered the country illegally from Mexico and legally obtained a Maryland license using one issued to him in North Carolina in 2004.
