Nobel Winner Sentenced in Crash

A Nobel laureate in physics was sentenced Monday to two years in state prison for causing a fatal crash while driving 111 mph on U.S. 101.

John Robert Schrieffer, 74, made no statement at the brief hearing before Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge James Herman. Schrieffer’s attorney later said the scientist, whose breathing was labored and who had to be supported by others when he walked to the defense table, is in failing health.

Schrieffer pleaded no contest to a charge of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence for his role in the 2004 crash just south of Santa Maria. Driving from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, where he once headed the Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara, Schrieffer slammed into a van carrying eight Kern County residents who were headed to the Chumash Casino in Santa Ynez, northwest of Santa Barbara.

Renato Catolos, 57, a warehouse manager and Navy veteran, was thrown from the van and died at the scene. Another passenger, Amparo Mangapit, 77, died a month later. Attorneys in a civil suit contend he died from his injuries but Schrieffer was charged only in the death of Catolos.

The van’s driver, Susan Yap, 44, said in a telephone interview that the sentence was too lenient. “If he wasn’t famous, he’d probably get more than that,” said Yap, who still receives treatment for her shoulder injuries.

“All of us are in pain,” she said. “He’s going to suffer for only two years, but we’re going to suffer the rest of our lives.”

Yep said the group was in Santa Barbara County to help prepare a Filipino fiesta in the town of Guadalupe.

With good conduct, Schrieffer could be freed in a year, said his attorney, Roger Lytel of Santa Barbara.

In his sentencing, Herman rejected a plea agreement that had been approved by a previous judge. Under that arrangement, Schrieffer would have spent eight months in jail, even though the initial charges called for a prison term as long as 15 years.

“This court simply cannot accept that in terms of harm to the families,” said Herman, who had ordered Schrieffer to Wasco State Prison in August for a pre-sentencing evaluation. “The restoration of moral balance in the community requires some punishment.”

Herman described Schrieffer as “a man of accomplishment, a man of integrity” except for his abysmal driving record. Since 1993 he had received nine speeding tickets and was driving on a suspended Florida license at the time of the crash.

The judge also said he took into account “this American Dream” extended family of Filipino immigrants whose lives were irreversibly damaged by Schrieffer’s recklessness. The accident cost one family a father and another a mother, Herman said. One of the passengers, he said, is “permanently crippled.”

Schrieffer will serve his time at a prison equipped to handle inmates with serious medical problems. He recently was diagnosed with diabetes and has other long-standing medical problems, his attorney said.

With two other physicists, Schrieffer was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1972 for a groundbreaking explanation of superconductivity -- the disappearance of electrical resistance in certain metals at very cold temperatures.