Why was Chatfield vehicular homicide suspect allowed to take a vacation?

ROCHESTER — The family of a man killed in a crash last year is wondering why the man accused in his death

has been allowed to go on vacation while he awaits trial.

Ricky Hutton

died after his motorcycle collided

with a vehicle driven by Nicholas Sprau on U.S. Highway 52 north of Chatfield in September 2022. Sprau is facing

homicide charges related to the crash.

During a hearing in late August, Hutton’s family looked on in disbelief as Sprau was allowed to stay out of jail without paying bail. The judge also granted him permission to leave the state this month for a vacation.

Sprau, who prosecutors say was twice over the legal limit following the crash, is facing three felony counts of criminal vehicular homicide related to driving under the influence and two lower charges of driving while under the influence.

Brittany Kisro, Hutton’s sister-in-law and spokesperson for the family, said the family was expecting the justice system to be fair, but following Sprau’s lax release conditions and after they spoke to prosecutors, they realized that may not be the case.

“(Sprau) is not going to get squat for time,” Kisro told the Post Bulletin. “I hate to say it but is it because (Sprau’s) a white man that comes from money, when Ricky’s kind of the low man on the totem pole? That’s not fair.”

The two men lived very different lives.

Hutton had been in and out of court for several years and was a high school dropout, compared to Sprau, who went to the University of Wisconsin and had no prior criminal cases.

In 2020, Hutton was ordered to pay $40,000 bail in a case where he was accused of domestic assault and harassment. He could not afford it, so he sat in jail for 327 days until he secured a plea deal, which sent him to prison for 30 months.

Sprau, who is facing homicide charges, has been able to stay out of jail, other than the short time he was incarcerated following his arrest.

Initially, Sprau was

released on his own recognizance following his August hearing,

which required him, among other things, to abstain from alcohol. The judge said in court he was being released due in part to him not being a flight risk.

On Sept. 5, Sprau posted a $15,000 bond for an unconditional release, which means the only restriction now placed on him by the court is to show up for his hearings.

That difference doesn’t sit right with Kisro.

“I think our justice system is not being fair,” Kisro said. “If it was me or you and we were to go out and do the same thing as (Sprau) has done, we would have went to jail and we’d be sitting in jail.”

Sprau is the chief executive officer for Metafile Information Systems, Inc., a Rochester-based software development company. It is a family business with revenue

close to $18 million, according to ZoomInfo.

He is accused of killing Hutton on the night of Sept. 10, 2022, while turning into his driveway on U.S. Highway 52 and being heavily intoxicated. He and his wife were returning home from a brewery and the couple told law enforcement they had been drinking. An analysis of his blood obtained through a search warrant showed a blood alcohol concentration of 0.173.

Hutton was plagued by addiction, anger issues and multiple court cases involving domestic abuse, assault and illegal drugs. Those issues were seemingly on the way out, according to Kisro, who said Hutton was on the road to recovery and making amends for his past.

“Even though Ricky didn’t have a lot, he was still trying to help those around and trying to make up for the lost relationships,” Kisro said.

At the time of his death, Hutton, a father of four, had been out of prison for about two months and had recently earned his general education development diploma.

Before the crash, Hutton had been working to help a family member through a tough time, Kisro said. Hutton would call every day to check on them and to see if they needed anything.

Hutton, who was a bit of a jokester, loved to fish, and work on his car’s audio or his motorcycle.

“He didn’t take a lot in life seriously if he didn’t absolutely have to,” Kisro said. “He was a big family guy, family meant a lot to him.”

Sprau’s lawyer, Eric Newmark, of Minneapolis, declined to comment for this story.

The Olmsted County Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

The office most recently came to a plea agreement with 21-year-old Rochester resident Deng Tong Kwel, which may give an idea of where Sprau’s charges could land him.

Kwel’s charges said

he killed a woman in August 2022 while he drove recklessly.

He was also allowed to be released on his own recognizance and given a similar unconditional bail amount as Sprau. His plea deal calls for a guideline sentence from criminal vehicular homicide, which is 48 months in prison for first-time offenders.

According to a study published in the U.S. Department of Justice National Criminal Justice Reference Center, the

criminal justice system “unintentionally serves the interests of the rich and powerful.”

“The criminal justice system fails to protect people from the most serious dangers by failing to define the dangerous acts of those who are affluent as serious crimes and by failing to enforce the law vigorously against affluent persons,” the study’s author, Jeffrey Reiman, wrote.

No amount of money or prison time will bring back Hutton, Kisro told the Post Bulletin.

“There’s really no justice for us because (Sprau) took a father, a fiancée, an uncle, a brother. He took that away from us,” Kisro said.

However, the family would like to see some accountability, according to Kisro, who added Sprau needs to take ownership of what happened.

Hutton’s family will be getting together at the crash site on Sunday, Sept. 10, the anniversary of Hutton’s death, to celebrate his memory.

The speed of the other driver in a crash can play a big factor in a criminal vehicular operation case, even if one of the other drivers is intoxicated.

In Sprau’s case, a scene reconstruction determined that Hutton was traveling below the speed limit when he began braking prior to the crash.

In a different case involving Dr. Patricia Price, a Rochester-based licensed psychologist, a scene reconstruction showed the vehicle she collided with was speeding, which likely played a role in her plea agreement.

“I can’t speak for the prosecutor but if I was a prosecutor, I think it would play an important part in which I envisioned my case coming in and how basically a jury would look at that case,” Price’s attorney, Zach Bauer, of Rochester, told the Post Bulletin. He added the other vehicle not having a back license plate may have played a factor, as well.

Price is accused of crashing her vehicle

into another car when she failed to yield at the intersection of North Broadway and 48th Street Northeast on the night of June 3, 2022. Her teenage son was in her vehicle at the time. At least two people were injured in the vehicle she collided with.

Her

plea deal calls for no more than 60 days in jail and for a stay of imposition for three years

where Price would be under supervised probation. She pleaded guilty to a gross misdemeanor third-degree driving under the influence charge in exchange for the dismissal of two felony criminal vehicular operation charges.

“If I had any doubts about how fair the legal system was prior to this, this has cemented it,” Meg Prentice, a mother of one of the teenagers injured in the crash with Price, told the Post Bulletin.

She said the crash still affects her son, who still worries about vehicles not stopping while he is in a car.

The Olmsted County Attorney’s Office prosecutes hundreds of cases a year related to driving under the influence. The vast majority of those end with a plea deal and almost never include prison time.

“By the grace of God, every one of those boys walked across the stage the next morning at graduation,” Prentice said. 

Prentice’s son told her that during the graduation ceremony, he could not pay attention to any of the speeches because all he could hear was the sound of screeching brakes, she said.  

In her plea agreement, Price told the court she had two mixed vodka drinks. The agreement also noted she had a 0.156 blood alcohol concentration after the crash.

“She’s just able to get away with it,” Jennifer Rand,

the mother of the teenager driving the vehicle Price collided with,

told the Post Bulletin.

Both Rand and Prentice said they spoke to the Olmsted County Attorney’s Office. The mothers say prosecutors said they had a strong case and expected a felony conviction for Price.

However, the two mothers were dismayed to hear a prior assistant county attorney on the case had agreed to the plea deal and the office was going to honor it.

Price’s plea deal is standard for Olmsted County, Bauer said. “And people can disagree with that being the way that the court system does it but she is not being treated any differently.”

Rand has also accused Price of buying her way out of the felony charges by enlisting a private company to do the crash reconstruction, something Bauer, her attorney, denies.

The prosecution had a crash reconstruction done by law enforcement, according to Bauer, who said prosecutors do not take whatever the defense gives them at face value.

“I think, especially in the light of the facts and the circumstances, I think it was absolutely an appropriate resolution for the facts and what the state would be able to prove at trial,” Bauer said.

Price told the Post Bulletin shortly after the crash she felt “horrified and gutted for the boys and families involved.”

She has yet to reach out to the families, according to Prentice.

“Unless you have money and can hire a bunch of lawyers to go after her, this is what you get, the short end of the stick,” Prentice said.

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