‘Prison Break’ star gets 40 months in prison

updated 3:32 p.m. ET Oct. 31, 2007

LOS ANGELES - Lane Garrison was sentenced to three years and four months in prison Wednesday for a drunken driving crash that killed a 17-year-old Beverly Hills High student last December.

“The public has the right to know that conduct such as this, causing devastation such as this” will have consequences, said Superior Court Judge Elden S. Fox.

“Unfortunately, in this case, you have to be the messenger,” he told the former “Prison Break” actor.

Garrison, 27 could have received nearly seven years in prison. He had no reaction to the sentencing and was taken away in handcuffs.

Before the sentencing, he apologized to the family of Vahagn Setian.

“I’m sick of my own behavior that night,” he said. “This remorse is genuine. I feel it every day.”

About 30 teenagers, many of them Beverly Hills High students, packed the courtroom, some wearing T-shirts that had Setian’s photograph and the motto: “Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”

“There are no winners in this situation, obviously,” Setian family spokesman James Lee said outside court.

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“I wouldn’t characterize the family as being happy about this,” he said. “Vahagn will not come back.”

After the hearing, defense attorney Harland Braun said his client “was hopeful (of leniency) but someone’s dead and he’s alive.”

Braun said Garrison told him: “I’m the lucky one.”

Setian was a passenger in the 2001 Land Rover that Garrison rammed into a tree on Dec. 2. Two 15-year-old girls who also were in the vehicle survived.

Garrison met the teens at a grocery store and accompanied them to a party. At the time of the crash, Garrison had a blood-alcohol level of 0.20 percent, more than twice the legal limit for driving, and was under the influence of cocaine, according to police.

Garrison pleaded guilty in May to one count of vehicular manslaughter without gross negligence, one count of driving under the influence with a blood-alcohol level of 0.15 percent or higher and a misdemeanor of providing alcohol to a minor.

Classmates and relatives of Setian had pressed for Garrison to get the maximum sentence. On Tuesday, they tried to deliver a petition carrying more than 3,000 signatures making the request, but were told to submit it at the hearing through a prosecutor.

The judge refused to accept the petition Wednesday, calling it inappropriate.

Fox imposed both prison time and four years’ parole and ordered Garrison to pay around $300,000 in restitution to the victims and their families.

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