Controversial “American Idol” alum Caleb Kennedy has been handed a reduced but nearly decade-long sentence for a 2022 deadly DUI crash when he was 17.
The South Carolina country singer pleaded guilty this week to felony driving under the influence resulting in the death. Kennedy was initially handed the maximum 25-year prison sentence, before it was ultimately lowered to eight years, according to Greenville News.
He’ll serve five years behind bars and three on home detention, pay a $15,100 fine, and be on five years of probation post-release.
At the time of the accident, Kennedy, now 20, was under the influence of Prozac and marijuana, having taken drags from a vape pen before driving to his girlfriend’s home in South Carolina’s Spartanburg County. He was behind the wheel of his 2011 Ford F-150 when he careened into a private driveway and crashed into a workshop outside Pacolet.
That workshop belonged to 54-year-old Larry Parris, who was on a phone call outside when he was hit by Kennedy’s truck and pushed into the building.
Parris was transported to a hospital in critical condition, only to be pronounced dead hours later.
Lawyer Ryan Beasley, who represented Kennedy, justified his client’s reduced sentence.
“He’s got no record, and he was a minor when this happened,” Beasley told Greenville News, dismissing the DUI as not as “egregious” as many others involving hard drugs and alcohol.
“This was a weird reaction from his prescription medicine and possibly THC,” Beasley said.
Kennedy was polarizing long before he killed Parris, having exited the 19th season of “American Idol” in 2021 after an old video surfaced of him sitting beside someone wearing what looked like a Ku Klux Klan hood.
His mother said at the time it was taken when he was 12 years old after watching the movie “The Strangers: Prey at Night.” She told the Herald-Journal that he and the other person in the clip were only “imitating” the characters in the film and that it wasn’t meant to symbolize any racism.
The top five contender later apologized for the video, saying he “was younger and did not think about the actions, but that’s not an excuse.”
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