'Melrose Place' actress won't do more time for fatal crash

Associated Press

SOMERVILLE, N.J. (AP) — A former "Melrose Place" actress convicted in a fatal drunken driving accident won't have to go back to prison, a judge ruled Friday at a resentencing spurred by an appeals court's concerns that her original sentence may have been too lenient.

Amy Locane-Bovenizer served about two and a half years of a three-year sentence for the 2010 accident in Montgomery Township that killed 60-year-old Helene Seeman and seriously injured Seeman's husband, Fred. She was released in 2015.

The actress was convicted of vehicular manslaughter, assault by auto and other offenses and faced a sentencing range of five to 10 years on the most serious count. Her defense had argued the crash was an accident.

A state appeals court last July ordered the judge to offer a more detailed justification for why he downgraded Locane-Bovenizer's sentence to three years. State Superior Court Judge Robert Reed later conceded he erred and should have sentenced her to an additional six months.

Prosecutors had sought a seven-year sentence.

On Friday, the judge said Locane-Bovenizer's conduct since her release shows she isn't a threat to society.

The Seemans' family and friends had harshly criticized the original sentence, and they repeated those criticisms in court Friday.

Locane-Bovenizer appeared in 13 episodes of TV's "Melrose Place" and in movies including "Cry-Baby," ''School Ties" and "Secretary."

According to trial testimony and statements by prosecutors, Locane-Bovenizer drank alcohol at two parties on the afternoon of the crash and was driving with a blood-alcohol level nearly three times the legal limit when her SUV slammed into Fred Seeman's Mercury Milan as he turned into his driveway.

Locane-Bovenizer's lawyers argued that a third motorist, whose car the actress had bumped into at a traffic light in the minutes before the accident, distracted her by honking at her and chasing her after being rear-ended.

Locane-Bovenizer still faces a federal lawsuit stemming from the crash.