Jail for motorist who killed a Bucks policeman

The law deems Frank Budka's crime unintentional.

The Bucks County judge who sentenced Budka yesterday for the death of a Middletown Township police officer was not so sure.

"There is a part of this case that is truly intentional," Judge Albert J. Cepparulo told Budka, who was driving under the influence of drugs last year when he caused the accident that killed Officer Christopher Jones. "That's your . . . insatiability with regard to drugs."

Cepparulo sentenced Budka, 46, of Levittown, to 41/2 to 17 years in state prison for the death of Jones, 37, a married father of three. In November, Cepparulo found Budka guilty of homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence.

On Jan. 29, 2009, Jones had stopped a car for speeding along Route 1 when Budka lost control of his car. It struck another vehicle and slammed into Jones' police cruiser, fatally pinning the officer beneath his own vehicle.

Budka, a longtime alcohol and drug abuser, had smoked marijuana on top of taking his legal painkillers.

"You must have known . . . that you were a ticking time bomb," Cepparulo said.

Jones was a 10-year member of the Middletown force, lauded by friends and strangers for his kindness and generosity.

"No matter what the circumstances," his widow, Suzanne, said in a statement submitted to the court, "he treated everyone with the kindness, respect and dignity that [they] deserved."

Defense attorney Barnaby C. Wittels called Budka "a damaged man before" who "is now a broken man." Budka, whose father died in a car crash when he was a toddler, "has to live with the knowledge that he has taken a father from his children," Wittels told Cepparulo.

Wittels said that Budka had turned to drugs and alcohol after a childhood in which he was sexually abused by a neighbor, bullied at school, and physically abused by his stepfather.

Cepparulo said Budka's long history of substance abuse - plus two arrests - should have made him aware of the risks of driving while impaired.

"This was a totally avoidable accident," he said. "Had you not consumed . . . we would not be here."

Cepparulo said he had received many victim-impact statements detailing not only the devastation of Jones' death on his loved ones, but on the community he served. Among the writers: a friend who received Jones' transplanted kidney after the officer's death.

Cepparulo ordered Budka to undergo drug and alcohol treatment in prison, to submit to random drug tests after his release, and to consume no alcohol or drugs throughout his incarceration and probation - a total of more than 20 years.

At the request of Jones' widow, Cepparulo also ordered Budka to read every victim impact statement once a year, on Jan. 29.

Suzanne Jones declined to speak to reporters afterward. "We believe that justice has been served, although we will forever miss Chris," she said in a written statement.

"The family knows there's nothing the judge can do to ease their pain," Chief Deputy District Attorney Robert James said.

Wittels praised the judge for a sentence filled with incentives for Budka to stay clean.

"He has placed the responsibility squarely on Mr. Budka to earn parole," he said, "and then to stay out of trouble."