Steven Applegate, 34, was originally sentenced to eight more years in prison for a car accident that left another man injured,
Exterior view of the new Mercer County Criminal Courthouse in Trenton on South Warren St, in Trenton, New Jersey.
HAMILTON — A township man received a new sentence today for a hit-and-run accident while he was on probation.
Steven Applegate, 34, was originally sentenced to eight more years in prison for a car accident that left another man injured, and Applegate in violation of his probation. Under the revised sentence handed down today, Applegate would likely be before a parole board in approximately 2½ to three years, the judge said.
Applegate has already served 15 years in prison for killing a Trenton man in 1995.
Judge Robert Billmeier revised the eight-year sentence handed down in December, imposing a sentence of 20 years in prison with 15 years of parole ineligibility. But Billemeier explained that because Applegate has more than 15 years in jail credit, he would be eligible for parole immediately.
Billmeier said he has done research in the last few weeks regarding the sentence, and in his discussions with parole board officials he found that it is more likely that Applegate would not be paroled immediately, but in about three years.
“That is the type of time frame that the court was thinking about,” Billmeier said.
Applegate was sentenced for a violation of his parole for the hit-and-run accident in October 2011 in which a passenger in another car was injured. He told the court that he had used drugs and alcohol that night when he ran a stop sign on Estates Boulevard in Hamilton.
When he was 17, Applegate beat and strangled Jerry Riley, a cook at a Beatty Street tavern. He was sentenced in 1998 to 30 years in prison, of which he would have to serve 15 years before he would be eligible for parole.