Idaho driver in ‘deep and dark cycle’ of addiction killed a man. Here’s his sentence
When William Sweet’s public defender met him days after he’d been arrested, she didn’t know much about the case yet, other than that somebody was dead, she recounted during her client’s sentencing Tuesday.
Sweet, a Caldwell resident, corrected her, she said. The man wasn’t a “decedent,” his name was Donald Priddy — and Sweet was always going to remember that.
Priddy, 66, of Boise, was walking on the sidewalk along State Street near 23rd Street when Sweet drove off the road and hit him. Priddy died at the scene from “traumatic blunt force injuries,” according to the Ada County Coroner’s Office.
Sweet was charged with and pleaded guilty as part of a plea deal to felony vehicular manslaughter, court records showed. Before driving that night, he sat in his car and drank until he “blacked out,” Ada County Deputy Prosecutor Robert Mark Bleazard said in court.
While he called Sweet’s decision to drive “reckless” and “negligent,” Bleazard said it was part of a pattern. For months, Sweet had been drinking and driving, he said, and on that night, his decision was “deadly.”
Before handing down her sentence, Cynthia Yee-Wallace, the 4th District judge presiding over the case, said no punishment could bring Priddy back or match “the amount of grief in this courtroom.”
But it was a case that required incarceration, she said.
Yee-Wallace sentenced the 50-year-old Sweet to three years fixed in prison, with another seven years he could spend in prison, on parole or both. He could be eligible for parole in about 2 ½ years, as he’s receiving credit for the 156 days he spent in the Ada County Jail.
He’ll also be expected to pay a $5,000 fine, which will go to Priddy’s family, along with an undetermined amount of restitution.
Yee-Wallace also urged Sweet to address the larger issue that led to his dependency on alcohol. He was kidnapped and raped as a child, the judge acknowledged in court, and the trauma from that “horrific violent assault” is going to keep leading him to be a danger to himself and others, until he’s able to process the pain and fear from that.
When trauma happens, you have a responsibility not to pass it on to other people — and he did that, the judge said, telling him: “That’s on you.”
“I understand it’s hard work to go face-to-face with the most terrifying thing that’s ever happened to you,” Yee-Wallace said. “You owe to this victim’s family, and you owe it to your own family, and you owe it yourself to take care of that.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sweet quietly responded.
Victim’s family urges Sweet to ‘stay off the alcohol’
A veteran of the U.S. Army who survived being held captive as a prisoner of war for 2 ½ years, and a husband, father and grandfather, Priddy was the type of person who greeted the world with “a kind of childlike happiness,” Bleazard said.
Yee-Wallace said it sounded as if Priddy must have been “a pretty amazing and loving person,” given statements read in court by both his wife and daughter, which she said were “full of grace.”
His daughter asked Sweet to “stay off the alcohol” in her statement. If not for himself, then for his children, she said, adding that kids look up to their fathers in more ways than they would ever let on.
“I feel like my father wanted to help you, oddly, in some way,” she said. “So please don’t let his death be for (nothing.)”
In a brief and emotional statement, Priddy’s wife echoed her daughter’s desire for Sweet to get the help he needed. She said she hoped he never got behind the wheel of a vehicle and hurt somebody again — because the pain of losing her husband is “unimaginable.”
Sweet said he’s “never felt such brokenness” within himself for what he did to the Priddy family. He was in a “deep and dark cycle” of alcohol abuse and was a shell of himself, he said.
“The worst thing that could’ve happened — happened,” he added.
This story was originally published June 9, 2026 at 4:13 PM.
