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Joshua Paniccia pleads guilty
Updated: 3/15/2005 4:26 PM
By: Brian Taffe

	Josh Paniccia

Five days shy of his 19th birthday, Josh Paniccia of Niskayuna stood before a judge in Saratoga County Court and accepted a fate prosecutors said he could not escape. He pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide.

Ten months earlier on Riverview Road in Clifton Park, Paniccia lost control of his car, striking and killing 32-year-old bicyclist David Ryan. Prosecutors said he was racing at 83 miles per hour. In court, though, Paniccia said he was merely driving "a little too fast."

Murphy said, "I think 83 miles an hour is more than a little fast. It's outrageously fast. And I think it's criminally negligent, and that's what the conviction was for today."

	David Ryan

Paniccia will serve one to three years in jail for his crime -- one that's had a lot of attention. But that attention has focused not just on that crime, but also on the road that led to it.

Walter Cicha said, "This person was charged four times before June 29, and he was still driving?"

Walter Cicha was one of David Ryan's best friends, a man he biked with often. He said had the law worked properly, Josh Paniccia would not even have been allowed to drive the day his friend was killed. Ticketed three times before for speeding, his license would have been revoked. Instead, Paniccia pleaded all of them down. For that reason, Richard Evans -- who does not know Ryan or Paniccia -- has been watching this case closely.

Evans said, "So there's no history for the judge to look at, whether this person was a serial speeder, as in this case he was."

But Paniccia had no record to prove it.

Cicha said, "This was preventable, and I want to make bloody sure it doesn't happen again."

So he and Evans are working to change the law. Ryan's parents, who live in England, issued a statement saying, "We feel that a four year sentence would only be a token and any less would cause us considerable grief." In that, they know they are not alone.

Cicha said, "Joshua Paniccia, his parents, all of us are suffering through all of this, so we just gotta make sure we improve something from all of this. This is a lesson to be learned here."

Paniccia will be sentenced on June 6 but may be granted youthful offender status. That would mean this felony conviction would not appear on his record.