E-mail Story
Print Friendly
Send E-mail
Reprint story
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Not Guilty
By Vic Vela
Journal Northern Bureau
SANTA FE — Drunken driver Scott Owens is now a free man, after a Santa Fe jury Tuesday found him not guilty of causing the deaths of four teenagers and injuring another in a crash east of Santa Fe two summers ago.
The eyes of the 29-year-old Owens welled up with emotion as state District Judge Michael Vigil read the jury's verdict of acquittal on all five counts he faced.
No longer encumbered by handcuffs, Owens walked out of Vigil's courtroom with his attorney, Dan Cron.
Owens, whose defense admitted he was intoxicated when his Jeep Cherokee crashed into the Subaru carrying the five teens, said nothing to reporters seeking comment.
Owens wasn't the only one in tears as the verdict was announced about 5:45 p.m.
Several family members and friends of the teenagers who were either killed or injured in the wreck on Old Las Vegas Highway on June 28, 2009, were overwhelmed.
"A murder. A sharp lawyer. Families left with holes. Lots and lots of them," Dan Koffman said outside the courthouse.
Koffman's daughter, Avree, was seriously injured when Owens' Jeep T-boned the red Subaru she was driving. The four friends who were riding in Avree's car that night were all killed.
John Simmons, the father of 15-year-old crash victim Rose Simmons, also expressed disbelief. Rose, along with 16-year-olds Alyssa Trouw, Julian Martinez and Kate Klein, died in the wreck.
"Just because they let him off doesn't mean he's not guilty," Simmons said.
"I can't (expletive) believe it," he said. "I saw what they (the jurors) saw."
Then there were the young friends of the victims. Some of them engaged in tearful embraces.
"I woke up to the words, 'Rose is dead,'" said 17-year-old Kayla McMurtry, recalling the news from two summers ago. "It definitely hurts. I've been waiting for two years to see them take him away in handcuffs."
The jury deliberated for nine hours Tuesday before coming back with an acquittal on four counts of vehicular homicide and one count of great bodily injury by vehicle. They had deliberated for about four hours Monday, after hearing lengthy closing arguments by attorneys.
None of the 12 jurors commented on the verdicts as they left the courthouse Tuesday evening. Phone calls placed to some of the jurors' homes were not immediately returned, and a man at one juror's home said she would have no comment.
Fault disputed
Some details from the night of the crash were never in question during the trial. The defense agreed that Owens, who was on his way back into Santa Fe from a barbecue at Rowe Mesa, was intoxicated at the time of the crash. His blood alcohol concentration of 0.16 percent was twice the legal limit for a driver in New Mexico.
What was also a fact was that Koffman was driving the lead car in a four-vehicle caravan of teens eastbound on the highway just before the wreck occurred. The teens were on their way from Santa Fe to a party in Eldorado. Koffman had not been drinking.
The wreck occurred in Owens' lane. But the main issue that jurors had to deal with was who was at fault in the crash, regardless of the fact that Owens was drunk.
Prosecutors argued that Owens was in the wrong lane and that Koffman swerved into Owens' lane to avoid his Jeep. They say Owens then swerved back into his lane, T-boning the passenger side of the red Subaru.
But Owens' defense was that he was in his proper lane and that it was erratic driving on the part of the teens that caused the wreck. Jurors weighed defense evidence that Koffman's red Subaru made contact with a white Subaru that was traveling immediately behind Koffman's in the caravan.
The defense raised the possibility that the driver of the white Subaru, 16-year-old Taylor Johnson, struck Koffman's vehicle as Johnson was driving on the highway's shoulder, side-by-side with the red Subaru, presumably in an effort to pass her friend.
That contact forced Koffman to enter Owens' lane, causing the accident, argued defense attorney Dan Cron.
Jury instructions
As the jury deliberations winded down Tuesday afternoon, jurors requested to again look at either the bumpers or the bumper components from the two Subarus, items that were shown to them at trial.
And before reaching a verdict on any of the five counts, jurors had to abide by important language that was detailed in the instructions that state District Judge Michael Vigil read to them prior to the start of deliberations Monday afternoon.
The instructions stated that prosecutors had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the teens' deaths or Koffman's injuries was a "foreseeable result" of Owens' actions.
The state also had to prove that Owens' "act" was "a significant cause" of the deaths or injuries.
A "significant cause," according to the jury instructions, was defined as "an act, which in a natural and continuous chain of events, uninterrupted by an outside event, resulted in the death and without which the death would not have occurred."
Jurors could have convicted Owens even if they decided that "negligence of a person other than the defendant may have contributed to the cause of death," or, in Koffman's case, injury.
"Such contributing negligence does not relieve the defendant of responsibility for an act that significantly contributed to the cause of the death (or Koffman's injuries ) so long as the death was a foreseeable result of the defendant's actions," the instructions said.
Jurors were told that if they determined that negligence on the part of a person other than Owens was "the only significant cause of death," then they should find defendant is not guilty.
Owens, who has been behind bars since the crash occurred, did not face a separate DWI charge in the case.
You also can send comments via our comment form
|
|
