Five men to serve jail time for hazing death of Florida State student
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Five men have accepted a plea deal and will serve jail time for the hazing death of a Florida State University student. The men originally faced up to five years in prison for a felony hazing charge before agreeing to plead guilty to a misdemeanor hazing charge.
The Tallahassee Democrat reports four of the men will serve 60-day jail sentences and a fifth will serve 30 days after cooperating with the investigation. The men were in the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity, where 20-year-old Andrew Coffey died of alcohol poisoning in November.
Four other men remain charged and are scheduled to go to trial in June.
Coffey, a junior, was found unresponsive on a couch the morning after a Pi Kappa Phi fraternity party in November. A lawsuit claims he'd been asked to drink an entire bottle of 101-proof bourbon. His death led to the university temporarily banning alcohol and social functions at fraternities and sororities.
Hazing has killed at least one person a year since 1961, CBS News correspondent Tony Dokoupil reports. Coffey was one of four victims in 2017.
Now, his parents are pushing for a new federal anti-hazing law.
"If people in the past had gotten together, maybe my son would still be here, if hazing wasn't a problem. So therefore, we have to yell as loud as we can in order to get this stopped," father Tom Coffey told "CBS This Morning" last month, speaking publicly for the first time. "I don't want another family going through what we go through. Crying ourselves to sleep."
