Driver in Graduation Night Crash Gets 6 Years : Sentencing: The dead youth’s mother blames his ex-schoolmate’s family and the court system for the drunk-driving accident.

In a hearing tinged with anger, pain and acrimony, a 20-year-old Garden Grove man was sentenced Wednesday to six years in prison for killing his former Fillmore schoolmate in a drunk-driving accident.

The mother of 18-year-old James Anderson said she was not angry at Justin Neff for the violent wreck that killed her son on graduation night near Fillmore.

She reserved her anger for Neff’s parents and the court system that let him drive her son to his death June 15, two days after Neff’s conviction on another drunk-driving charge.

“Why was Justin still driving?” Linda Anderson said during Neff’s sentencing in Ventura County Superior Court. “The system has failed us, but the system has also failed Justin as well.”

Anderson said Neff would not have become involved with alcohol if his parents had disciplined him better and wouldn’t have caused the fatal crash if the courts had kept a tighter rein on him during probation for two previous drunk-driving convictions.

“I know as a mother that tough love is the hardest kind of love to give,” she said without looking at Neff’s mother, Judy Cottone, who sat on the other side of the courtroom. “I have--I had seven children . . . Justin can come back from whatever sentence you see fit to give him, but my son never can. Jimmy’s gone forever.”

Neff’s childhood was marred by his parents’ abuse of him and his own use of alcohol and drugs, said Robert Timmons, an addiction expert who evaluated Neff’s past.

“Justin is, in my opinion, an alcoholic who has had many opportunities for treatment and never took advantage of them,” Timmons told the court. “Unless he gets long-term treatment, he will likely re-offend.”

Cottone declined to comment after the hearing.

Judge Lawrence Storch then allowed Neff to speak.

Sounding remorseful, Neff stood solemnly, his head slightly bowed, and told the court that he had written out his statement because the crash damaged his memory.

“I know what happened was a terrible thing,” he said. “I want to say I’m sorry to the victim’s family, and I pray for them every night.”

Then he pleaded with Storch to “let me get my message across” by freeing him to lecture high school students about the dangers of drunk driving.

Neff said, “I promise no one will ever see me again in court for alcohol- or drug-related charges.”

Defense attorney Michael Norris said Neff began abusing alcohol and drugs in the sixth grade and probably was an alcoholic by his high school years.

Norris described rampant partying among the Fillmore graduates on commencement night, saying the youths “went from one parent’s house to another parent’s house to another parent’s house, where alcohol was free-flowing.”

But despite Norris’ request to send Neff to the California Youth Authority and Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard E. Holmes’ request for the maximum 10-year penalty, Storch gave Neff a six-year state prison sentence. It is to run concurrently with an 18-month term Neff is already serving for two prior drunk-driving convictions, Storch ruled.

“If I could bring your boy back, I’d pass the maximum sentence right away,” Storch said. But while Neff’s crime is serious, he faces a long life upon release “and I’d very much like to see him not re-offend,” Storch said.

He recommended that Neff seek alcoholism treatment while in prison. “I want Mr. Neff to emerge from a state prison commitment thinking that justice was done, that he’s paid his debt to society and he’s on the road to recovery.”

Neff pleaded no contest Aug. 24 to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, causing bodily injury while driving under the influence and being under the influence of alcohol and cocaine.

Holmes said Neff’s blood-alcohol level was about 0.20%--2 1/2 times the legal standard--the night the Camaro that he and Anderson, a former Fillmore High School schoolmate, were riding in careened into a telephone pole and broke in half.