His Aid in Murder Trial Helps Him : Drunk Driver Gets Jail in Death

A carpenter with an extensive criminal record was sentenced Tuesday to 270 days in County Jail for killing an 8-year-old girl in Sepulveda while driving drunk more than four years ago.

Jesse Perry, 37, also was ordered by Van Nuys Superior Court Judge James A. Albracht to pay the victim’s family an undetermined sum for restitution and serve five years’ probation.

Perry could have been sentenced to up to three years in state prison on the manslaughter conviction. But Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert P. Imerman asked Albracht to impose a lesser sentence because Perry was a key witness in the San Fernando murder trial of an alleged member of the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist prison gang.

In that case, Mart Meiel, 37, was convicted last month of murder with special circumstances for killing a grocery clerk during the robbery of a Sun Valley market on Sept. 19, 1982. Because of the special-circumstances conviction, Meiel must be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, Deputy Dist. Atty. William H. Johnson said.

Perry testified at the trial that Meiel told him that he shot the grocery clerk because the clerk was “trying to play hero or something” by running to the aid of a cashier during the robbery.

Imerman said Perry’s testimony helped bolster the “extremely weak” identifications that eyewitnesses to the crime made of Meiel.

Perry stood with his head bowed through much of Tuesday’s sentencing hearing, listening to the grandmother of the 8-year-old urge Albracht not to be lenient. “It has torn my family apart,” said Carol Eshelman of Westlake.

The girl, Salome Mendoza of Denver, was in California to visit Eshelman when the car in which she was riding was struck by Perry’s car on the San Diego Freeway near Roscoe Boulevard.

Albracht said he decided to give Perry the lesser sentence because “in aiding the prosecution in the Mart Meiel matter, it is entirely possible that he has saved others’ lives.”

Defense attorney Jonathan Ash said Perry has received a number of death threats from the Aryan Brotherhood since testifying against Meiel. Albracht said he would ask that Perry be sent out of state to serve his County Jail time if that is necessary to guarantee his safety.

According to a probation report, Perry has a lengthy juvenile and adult history of convictions for burglaries, possession of marijuana and driving cars without the owners’ consent dating back to 1962. The report said Perry was driving with a suspended license at the time of the fatal accident.