Donald Huff…won’t be making any pipe bombs in prison or boozing and cruising…
From San Antonio Express News
2013-09-27 — A bomb-maker who claimed, without much success, to be a passenger on his own Harley Davidson motorcycle during a drunken wreck four years ago that killed his girlfriend was sentenced Thursday to 45 years in prison.
Jurors found Donald Huff, 54, guilty in June of felony murder. He asked state District Judge Sid Harle to determine his sentence.
Huff was originally charged with intoxication manslaughter, which would have carried a maximum 20-year punishment, for the August 2009 wreck. Prosecutors enhanced the charge by alleging that he caused the death of Arlene Kay Harding-Watts, 46, in the course of committing another felony: a third driving while intoxicated arrest.
Since that wreck, Huff has been arrested a fourth time on a DWI charge, prosecutor David Henderson said Thursday as he sought a life sentence. Huff was also on federal probation for manufacturing an explosive device, he noted.
The defendant had agreed to make a pipe bomb for a methamphetamines cook in exchange for more drugs, not realizing at the time that the explosive was intended to be used for a (foiled) retribution plot, attorneys said. He was given probation after cooperating with federal authorities.
During a brief statement to the judge, Huff said Harding-Watts, whom he had met several months earlier while purchasing cigarettes, was an excellent driver and he enjoyed letting her take control.
“I am filled with remorse that I allowed Arlene to drive the motorcycle and that I rode with her after we had been drinking alcohol, resulting in her death,” he said in an affidavit filed by attorneys Ronald Guyer and Justin Fischer.
But EMS technician Kevin Norman, who testified during Huff’s jury trial that he was the first emergency responder to arrive on scene, cast doubt on the defendant’s contention he was merely a passenger.
“We saw him trying to pick her up and put her on the motorcycle,” Norman said of Huff, who was later found to have a blood
alcohol level of 0.17. ….MORE
