UPDATED: Courtney Coughlin pleads no contest, sentenced

PANAMA CITY — For the second time since her arrest after a car wreck that killed her 12-year-old daughter, Courtney Coughlin pleaded no contest to more than 20 felony charges stemming from the wreck and the “crime spree” that preceded it.

Before he sentenced Coughlin to 25 years Tuesday, Judge Michael Overstreet went over Coughlin’s three-page motion to withdraw that plea, point by point, to ensure Coughlin was certain this time. She had pleaded no contest in September, then withdrew her plea in October and fired her attorney, Fritz Mann, who said he had pressured her into taking a plea deal.

“You concede that those are no longer reasons that would allow you to withdraw your plea today?” Overstreet asked Coughlin.

Coughlin said she had enough time to go over the evidence with her attorney, that she was comfortable with the venue and she was satisfied with her attorney. Coughlin also apologized for her actions.

Assistant State Attorney Bob Sombathy spent several minutes going over the facts the state would establish if the case went to trial:

Coughlin, 35, was fleeing police and reckless when she ran a red light at high speed on July 11 and smashed into another car; the crash killed Kaylee Rice and injured the other driver, Joshua Steele, and just before the crash Coughlin had attempted to cash yet another stolen check. Sombathy listed more than $4,000 worth of fraudulent checks and credit card charges attributed to Coughlin in 2011 and noted she’d been arrested in 2011 for selling roxicodone.

“Within four years of being released from prison, she went on what can only be described as a crime spree,” Sombathy told Overstreet. Sombathy asked for a 30-year sentence.

John Peddy read a letter from his brother and Kaylee’s father, James Rice, an inmate in a Georgia federal prison. Both urged Overstreet to impose a severe sentence.

“No sentence could be proportional to what she did,” Peddy said of Coughlin.

Robert Boyette, Coughlin’s attorney, noted that Coughlin had not intended to kill anyone, and that even though her blood tests were negative for alcohol and drugs, all of her actions were those of an addict.

Boyette read a letter from Bob Coughlin, the grandfather who raised Coughlin. His granddaughter deserved punishment, he said, but she is “not an evil person.” He asked Overstreet “to be fair and merciful.”

But Sombathy said Coughlin was a “menace;” that she hadn’t meant to kill anyone doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have understood her actions made it a likelihood.

“The state’s position is sometimes making a reckless act is equivalent to making an intentional act,” he said.

Overstreet, who also sentenced Coughlin after she failed rehab in 2005, noted that Coughlin had squandered every opportunity she had been given. The maximum sentence he could have given Coughlin would have amounted to a life sentence, he said.

“This is not an act of negligence. I don’t see it that way,” Overstreet said. “It may not be the same as putting a gun to someone’s head and pulling the trigger, but it’s pretty close.”

Below are earlier versions of this story:

PANAMA CITY — For the second time since her arrest after a car wreck that killed her 12-year-old daughter, Courtney Coughlin pleaded no contest to more than 20 felony charges stemming from the wreck and the “crime spree” that preceded it.

Before he sentenced Coughlin to 25 years Tuesday, Judge Michael Overstreet went over Coughlin’s three-page motion to withdraw that plea, point by point, to ensure Coughlin was certain this time. She had pleaded no contest in September, then withdrew her plea in October and fired her attorney, Fritz Mann, who said he had pressured her into taking a plea deal.

“You concede that those are no longer reasons that would allow you to withdraw your plea today?” Overstreet asked Coughlin.

Coughlin said she had enough time to go over the evidence with her attorney, that she was comfortable with the venue and she was satisfied with her attorney. Coughlin also apologized for her actions.

Assistant State Attorney Bob Sombathy spent several minutes going over the facts the state would establish if the case went to trial:

Coughlin was fleeing police and reckless when she ran a red light at high speed on July 11 and smashed into another car; the crash killed Kaylee Rice and injured the other driver, Joshua Steele, and just before the crash Coughlin had attempted to cash yet another stolen check. Sombathy listed more than $4,000 worth of fraudulent checks and credit card charges attributed to Coughlin in 2011 and noted she’d been arrested in 2011 for selling roxicodone.

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PANAMA CITY — Courtney Coughlin, the 35-year-old mother who has been in jail since she was arrested after a July 11 car accident that killed her daughter, withdrew her not guilty plea Tuesday and entered a plea of no contest to a long list of charges.

Judge Michael Overstreet sentenced her to 25 years in prison.