When 17-year-old Luke Resecker crashed his Chevy Silverado into the minivan of a Georgia family celebrating the holidays in Texas, he essentially ended eight lives.
There were the six family members killed in the catastrophic head-on collision on Dec. 26, 2023. The seventh member, a doting dad who was left paralyzed, was the sole survivor in the minivan and lost everything he loved. And then there's Resecker himself.
A jury recently sentenced Resecker, who tested positive for THC, to 65 years in prison for the crash in one of the harshest penalties ever for someone driving under the influence of marijuana. If Resecker serves the entire prison term, he'll be in his mid-80s by the time he gets out.
The case has gained national attention and sparked debate about whether the prison time was too much for a teenager who made the worst mistake of his life or whether it's the only just punishment for a person responsible for a crash that killed so many innocent people. It's also shining a spotlight on an increasingly more common area of law: intoxication manslaughter involving marijuana, a drug that is now legal in a growing number of jurisdictions across the nation.
In exclusive interviews, USA TODAY spoke at length with Resecker's defense attorney and the two prosecutors who tried the case, shedding light on how jurors reached the heavy sentence.
