Prosecutors played a tape of a prison phone conversation in which Kay, 48, said of Skaggs: “I hope people realize what a piece of s--- he was. … Well, he’s dead, so f--- him.”
Means said he that he had been dreading sentencing Kay because he felt mandatory minimums were “excessive.” But the judge said that the prison conversations showed a “refusal to accept responsibility and even be remorseful for something you caused.”
In his own remarks, Kay apologized for having “spewed vitriol” about Skaggs, prosecutors and the jury, in that and other prison correspondence. “I wanted to blame Tyler for all of this,” Kay said, calling his words “so wrong and foul."
The emotional sentencing hearing spelled a bleak end to this phase of a legal saga that began when Skaggs, 27, was found dead in a Southlake, Tex., hotel room July 1, 2019, with oxycodone and fentanyl in his system. Kay’s family has said he will appeal his conviction.
Kay was, like Skaggs, a user of illicit opioids. During Kay’s trial in February, witnesses including several Major League Baseball players said he shared black market pain pills with them, though there was no testimony that he did so for profit.
Federal prosecutor Erinn Martin claimed that Kay was in Skaggs’ hotel room when he choked on his own vomit — a contention based on key card evidence — and that he didn’t try to save the pitcher either because “he freaked out and decided to save himself and his job,” or because he was incapacitated himself. Martin said...
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