Indian Time - A Voice from the Eastern Door

CANTON -- On the eve of his trial, a Hogansburg man admitted his involvement in a 2014 car crash that left a Massena woman with life-threatening injuries.

Joseph A. Back, 56, of River Road plead guilty on October 5, 2016 in St. Lawrence County Court to second-degree assault and first-degree vehicular assault in a deal with the district attorney’s office.

On the morning of his plea, a jury was being selected for his trial on original charges of first- and second-degree assault, first-degree reckless endangerment, first-degree vehicular assault, two counts of second-degree vehicular assault, aggravated DWI and two counts of DWI.

Back will be sentenced Dec. 12 to 5 1/2 years in prison with 5 years of post-release supervision on the assault charge, and a 2-to-4-year concurrent sentence on the vehicular assault charge. He could also be ordered to pay up to $115,000 restitution.

On March 27, 2014 in Massena, Back rear-ended a vehicle on state Route 37. While fleeing that scene, he collided head-on with a vehicle driven by Eva P. Waters of Massena, who was 52 at the time.

It took rescue workers about 45 minutes to extract Waters from her vehicle. She sustained serious injuries that included two fractured ankles, a broken femur, multiple broken ribs, a bruised lung, broken wrist and other internal injuries.

She spent two weeks at Fletcher Allen in Burlington, Vt., the first two days of which she was in an induced coma. She then spent four months in a Malone nursing home while she went through extensive rehabilitation.

On April 14, a state appeals court reversed the Oct. 3, 2014 by St. Lawrence County Court Judge Jerome J. Richards which dismissed Back’s indictment.

Richards had argued that St. Regis Mohawk Tribal Police were outside their jurisdiction by a quarter mile when they arrested Back.

The appeals court ruled that tribal police were within their authority for a citizen’s arrest.

Back is being held at the St. Lawrence County Correctional Facility in Canton pending sentencing.