Blogs > Saratogian Newsroom

The Saratogian Newsroom blog, complete with thoughts and commentary from our newsroom staff and regular posts on happenings around town.

Wednesday, February 5

Jeff Hampshire released from prison

So I was catching up on what I missed while I was doing my National Guard training and one interesting thing of note is that now Jeffrey Hampshire is out of prison.

For those who might remember, he was doing 2 to 4 years in prison for evidence tampering.

He was out drinking in Saratoga Springs on St. Patrick's Day 2010 when he and his friends got into a verbal dispute downtown with another group of revelers. The two groups seperated, but when Hampshire got into the passenger seat of Travis Carroll's Nissan Maxima, Carroll sped out of a downtown parking lot, striking Ryan Rossley and sending him into Henry Street.

According to testimony, Hampshire said "Go, go, go!" and told Carroll that Rossley was getting up. Rossley didn't move from the spot he landed on Henry Street and later died of the injuries.

Hampshire went to prison, though, because he had some role (however apparently small) in helping Carroll dispose of the windshield that had Rossley's blood and hair in it.

The trial was an interesting one, both because a mistrial was declared at one point due to some testimony by a Saratoga Springs Police investigator and also because in the decade preceding the hit-and-run Hampshire had been convicted of two felony burglaries and acquitted of one murder.

In 2001 he was accused of murdering Ruth Witter, his ex-girlfriend Catherine Seeber's step-great-grandmother. She went to prison for the crime while he walked free. (Her saga is winding and tragic and too much to get into, but if you're interested it's mostly right here).

The ADA tried to build a case against Hampshire as a persistent felony offender, which could have put him behind bars for life, but the judge didn't agree.

Anyway, I thought it was blog-worthy that Hampshire was released less than a month ago (Jan. 10) which was on the low end of his 2 to 4 year sentence.

He will remain on parole until 2015.

Labels: ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home