Man sentenced to 75 years for deadly wrong-way crash wants guilty plea tossed
Attorneys for Serghei Kundilovski say their client only speaks broken English and didn’t know he could be sentenced to decades behind bars when he pleaded guilty.
MENOMONIE, Wis. (FOX 9) - A man sentenced to 75 years in prison for killing three Minnesotans in a head-on crash wants his guilty plea tossed.
Attorneys for Serghei Kundilovski say their client only speaks broken English and didn’t know he could be sentenced to decades behind bars when he pleaded guilty.
On the witness stand Thursday, Kundilovski said he never told his attorney he wanted an interpreter during court proceedings for a wrong-way crash on I-94 in July 2017.
Authorities said Kundilovski was huffing aerosol cans and was under the influence when he slammed into the car of Jeremy Berchem, Adam Kendhammer and Bryan Rudell, killing all three friends on their way to a friend’s cabin in Wisconsin.
There were about a dozen loved ones in the gallery with photos of the crash victims as Kundilovski asked a judge to toss his guilty plea in the case.
His legal team argued their client, who was born in Moldova and speaks Russian as his first language, did not fully understand he was looking at the potential of 25 years behind bars on each count with the possibility of serving them consecutively.
It’s an argument Berchem’s sister wasn’t buying.
“He 100 percent understood the language,” Jill Goldenstein said. “You can just tell from the videos. This was all just a ruse and a waste of everybody’s time.”
State prosecutors argued Kundilovski absolutely knew the ramifications of his 2018 plea, playing video of him in his hospital bed days after the crash speaking with a state trooper to show Kundilovski’s English comprehension.
In the end, the judge tossed out the defense motion, keeping the 75-year prison term intact.
“The whole premise of this hearing was ridiculous to me,” said Goldenstein. “It all seemed common sense and straight forward to begin with. We definitely had to be here to show support for everybody taken from us and let the judge and defendant know we are not going to stop fighting.”