PARIS — Defense lawyers are asking a judge to sentence a 21-year-old woman found guilty of manslaughter in the deaths of two teenagers to community service.

Kristina Lowe of Oxford would be ordered to educate students about the dangers of distracted driving, according to her lawyer’s request.

“Incarceration of Kristina Lowe for this horrible tragedy will do nothing to benefit society,” defense lawyer James Howaniec said. 

In their sentencing memorandum, Howaniec and defense lawyer Chelsea Peters asked Active-Retired Justice Robert Clifford to forgo incarceration, as requested by prosecutors. They are seeking a five-year prison sentence, according to a sentencing memorandum filed with the court clerk’s office in June.

In May, a jury found Lowe guilty on two counts of manslaughter and one count of leaving the scene of an accident. She was at the wheel when Logan Dam, 19, and Rebecca Mason, 16, died in a car crash on Route 219 in West Paris on Jan. 7, 2012.

Lowe will be sentenced at 9 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 1, in Oxford County Superior Court, according to a court clerk. 

Heightened security was a constant during the the emotional trial, and is expected again during sentencing, the clerk said. 

Prosecutors are seeking 10-year sentences for each manslaughter conviction, to be served at the same time, with five years suspended, and an additional five-year sentence, the maximum for the felony charge, all suspended, for leaving the scene of an accident. 

The maximum prison time Lowe faces is 65 years in prison; each Class A manslaughter felony carries a potential 30-year sentence.

According to a memo, Assistant District Attorneys Richard Beauchesne and Joseph O’Connor opted for the lesser sentence because Lowe had no prior criminal convictions or motor vehicle offenses and no violations since her arraignment.

They noted that her actions were not as serious as if she had been convicted of operating under the influence, but if only community service were imposed the court risked downplaying the severity of the offense. 

“For that reason, although some significant portion of the defendant’s sentence should be suspended, a fully or even mostly suspended sentence risks sending a message that the court finds the defendant’s conduct deserving of only minimal condemnation,” they wrote.

Witnesses during the trial testified Lowe had arranged for alcohol to be provided at a party she attended in West Paris, that she appeared drunk when she arrived at the party and continued to drink up to half an hour before the fatal accident.

Lowe later left the party with Dam and Jacob Skaff, 22, and picked up Mason from her home on the way to the Big Apple in West Paris, where Skaff bought more alcohol.

Minutes before the crash, Lowe’s phone received a text message; one of the contentious points of the trial was whether she glanced down at her phone before the car drifted off the road, as Skaff testified and party-goers said Lowe had told them.

The defense claimed there was no physical evidence that she read the text message.

Lowe’s blood-alcohol content, taken at a hospital hours after the crash, was 0.04 percent and her blood also tested positive for marijuana. 

Prosecutors argued that Lowe should have sought help after the crash at one of the 24 homes she passed on her walk back to the party on Yeaton Lane.

Instead, they said, Lowe urged friends there not to call 911, persisted in denying she’d been driving and tried to persuade Maine State Police Trooper Lauren Edstrom that Skaff had been driving.

Howaniec described Lowe as an upstanding, intelligent woman left shattered emotionally and physically by events that claimed the lives of her two friends.

On his advice, she has not commented publicly on the case, he said. 

Howaniec pointed to manslaughter cases within the past decade in which there was little or no jail time, including a recent 10-day sentence in a drag-racing death. 

For a period before the trial began, Lowe had attempted to start a new life for herself in Virginia, away from the stigma surrounding the case in the community, Howaniec said. 

There, she began a relationship and gave birth to a child last August, he said. 

According to Howaniec, Lowe suffers from intense, chronic nightmares and depression. 

The events led the Legislature to pass a ban on texting and driving at the behest of Rebecca Mason’s father, Jerrold Mason. 

ccrosby@sunjournal.com

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