COFFEE COUNTY, Tenn. (WGNS News) - The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals has upheld a 12-year prison sentence for a man convicted of driving into oncoming traffic and causing a head-on collision that killed a Riverdale High School graduate and former cheerleader in 2021.

Twenty-two-year-old Katie Leigh Bauer was completing her psychology degree at Middle Tennessee State University and planning to marry her fiancé, Jacob Meaker. Following her death, friends and relatives spoke of the many dreams and goals she had for her future, including her hope of becoming a mother one day.

Bauer, who attended New Vision Baptist Church in Murfreesboro, never had the opportunity to fulfill those plans. Jonathan Andrew Berretta, who was 43 at the time, drove while intoxicated and struck the vehicle that Bauer was in head-on, ending her life and leaving her family and friends to cope with an immeasurable loss.

Berretta, who is now incarcerated in Hardeman County, was convicted of vehicular homicide by intoxication nearly three years after the young college student was killed. Shortly after sentencing, he filed an appeal raising 13 issues. Those challenges included the seizure and admission of his blood evidence and the trial judge’s decision to allow prosecutors to show jurors a photograph of Bauer taken while she was alive.

A Coffee County jury convicted Berretta, now 48, of vehicular homicide by intoxication and vehicular homicide per se in Bauer’s death. The trial court merged the two convictions and imposed a 12-year prison sentence, which must be served consecutively to an existing Davidson County sentence.

At approximately 2 a.m. on Aug. 7, 2021, appellate court documents show that Berretta, who was already facing a separate DUI charge in Davidson County, was driving in the wrong direction on a divided highway and traveling toward oncoming traffic. The collision occurred on Highway 55 outside Tullahoma, where Berretta struck Bauer’s vehicle head-on and killed her.

The first Tullahoma Police Department officer to arrive concluded from the positions of the vehicles and the divided-highway layout that Berretta had been traveling in the wrong lane. A Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper reported smelling alcohol on Berretta, while emergency medical personnel also detected a strong odor associated with alcohol.

Because Berretta suffered serious injuries and was about to be transported by helicopter to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, a Tullahoma police sergeant directed emergency medical personnel to draw his blood without first obtaining a warrant. The officer said there was not enough time to complete the warrant process before the medical flight departed.

Investigators later obtained a warrant to search Berretta’s vehicle and examine its airbag control module. The data showed that he did not apply the brakes before the collision. Police also reported finding two broken liquor bottles, one broken wine bottle and three empty beer cans inside the vehicle.

During a later interview with an investigator from the district attorney’s office, Berretta acknowledged consuming between nine and 10 beers while attending an IndyCar race in Nashville. He said he drank another two to four beers after returning home and an additional one or two beers while driving to Tullahoma.

Court documents state that Berretta estimated he had consumed between 12 and 16 beers throughout the day. However, he said he did not believe he was intoxicated when he began driving. He also reported falling asleep in a parking lot and waking shortly before 2 a.m., less than a minute before the collision.

Three blood samples collected at Vanderbilt were later sent to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation for forensic testing. The samples, drawn at approximately 3 a.m., 4:28 a.m. and 7:18 a.m., showed blood-alcohol concentrations of 0.283, 0.296 and 0.214, respectively. The first reading was more than three and a half times Tennessee’s standard legal limit of 0.08.

A Coffee County grand jury indicted Berretta in June 2022 on charges of vehicular homicide by intoxication and vehicular homicide per se. The indictment also included vehicular homicide by reckless conduct, second-offense DUI, second-offense DUI per se, violation of the open-container law and driving on the wrong side of the roadway. Prosecutors dismissed those additional charges at the beginning of the trial after the jury was sworn.

Before trial, Berretta asked the court to suppress the TBI blood-testing results and his Vanderbilt medical records. His defense argued, among other things, that no emergency justified the warrantless blood draw, that the hospital blood draws amounted to government action and that the later search warrant and judicial subpoena lacked probable cause.

The trial court denied the suppression motion, and the case proceeded to trial in May 2024. Jurors heard testimony from motorists who stopped to render aid, emergency responders, a TBI forensic toxicologist and the medical examiner who performed Bauer’s autopsy.

Berretta testified and acknowledged his alcohol consumption. In rebuttal, the TBI toxicologist said Berretta’s claim that he stopped drinking at 8:15 p.m. did not “make sense” given his blood-alcohol concentration of 0.283 at 3 a.m.

The jury found Berretta guilty of both vehicular homicide counts. Following a sentencing hearing, the court merged the convictions and sentenced him to 12 years in prison. His motion for a new trial was denied in September 2024, and he filed his notice of appeal 26 days later.

Berretta’s appeal raised 13 issues divided into three broad categories. Six challenged the collection and admission of his blood evidence, including whether the Vanderbilt warrant affidavit contained false or reckless statements, whether probable cause existed and whether the warrant was overly broad.

Six additional arguments concerned the trial itself. Berretta challenged the use of a photograph of Bauer taken while she was alive, the admission and chain of custody of the Vanderbilt blood samples, an alleged violation of his confrontation rights, the jury instructions and the combined effect of the claimed errors.

His final argument challenged the decision requiring his Coffee County sentence to run consecutively to his Davidson County sentence. The appellate opinion states that Berretta was on recognizance and pretrial supervision in Davidson County on a pending DUI charge when the fatal Coffee County crash occurred.

The appellate court determined that Berretta was not entitled to relief on any of his 13 claims and affirmed the Coffee County Circuit Court judgments. Although the judges found that admitting the photograph of Bauer was an error, they concluded that it was harmless in light of the other evidence presented at trial.

The higher court also upheld the consecutive sentencing decision, finding that Tennessee law required Berretta’s Coffee County sentence to follow the Davidson County sentence because he committed the fatal offense while released pending resolution of the earlier DUI case.

The Clerk of the Appellate Courts filed the opinion on June 30, 2026. The ruling leaves Berretta’s convictions and sentences unchanged, and he will remain incarcerated while serving the remainder of his prison terms.