The attorney for the driver who killed Nicki Minaj‘s father in a hit-and-run car accident in 2021 is speaking out after his client Charles Polevich was sentenced to just one year in jail.
In an interview with Baller Alert, Attorney Marc Craig Gann shared why he believed his client was handed down the one-year sentence. “The district attorney was recommending one to three years, the next lowest sentence is a year. In terms of the break that he got, did he get a bit of a break in terms of what the district attorney was offering? Yes.”
Gann denied that race played a role in the verdict stating, “I surely don’t think that race played a role in it at all.”
Instead, Gann says it was Polevich’s age and lack of criminal activity. “The judge took into account that he’s a 72-year-old man with no history of any kind of criminal history and who had been involved for a larger part of his life in charitable endeavors.”
According to officials, Polevich struck Robert Maraj, got out of his car and looked at him, but fled the scene without calling 911. The vehicle was later covered with tarp inside of his garage, which officials says is tampering with evidence.
Gann says fleeing the scene was the only criminal act in the case.
“At the end of the day, everybody understood that if Mr. Polevich would have remained at the scene, there wouldn’t be a criminal charge here,” said Gann.
In May of 2022, Judge Howard Sturim stated that Polevich wouldn’t receive “no more than a year in jail” after pleading guilty. In addition to his sentence, he must pay a $5,000 fine and his driver’s license has been suspended for six months.
Throughout the trial, talks regarding Polevich’s health were brought to the court’s attention. Gann shared that Polevich has a history of heart disease and heart attacks. He retained a forensic expert who he says he “couldn’t testify with a sufficient degree of medical certainty.”
Gann stated his health condition is what he believes caused Polevich to leave the scene of the accident.
“We couldn’t prove it because he wasn’t able to see a doctor soon enough to be able to substantiate that he had a heart attack. When he saw the doctors a few days later, there was evidence of a heart attack, but nobody knows when that happened,” shared Gann.
Polevich started his year sentence on Wednesday, August 3rd.
