Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Shanna West, who admitted driving high in a crash that killed a Dade City woman, wants to be set free pending her appeal.
By CHASE SQUIRES, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 15, 2003
DADE CITY -- The woman who pleaded guilty to driving high when she killed another motorist -- then announced she wanted to change her plea -- on Friday filed notice of appeal through an attorney and asked to be set free pending a ruling.
The 2-year-old manslaughter by culpable negligence case against Shanna Jane West, 23, appeared closed last month when she was sentenced after pleading guilty to driving high on the date rape drug GHB the day she slammed into an oncoming car in Land O'Lakes, killing 54-year-old Barbara Mercer of Dade City.
But this week, a letter filed in Circuit Court indicated she wanted to withdraw her plea. And on Friday, her public defender filed papers asking for her release from jail, where she has been since she was sentenced Jan. 16 to 14 years in prison.
A hearing on her bail request before Circuit Judge Wayne Cobb is scheduled for Friday morning. Prosecutor Phil Van Allen said he will object.
In addition to pleading guilty, West told a St. Petersburg Times reporter after the crash that she had downed two shots of Arizona Iced Tea laced with GHB before getting in her car and heading north on U.S. 41 on Nov. 21, 2000. She said she passed out at the wheel before slamming into the car Mercer was riding in. Four others in the car were injured.
Cobb asked West repeatedly at her sentencing in January and when she pleaded guilty in October if she was entering the plea voluntarily. She said she was.
She has given no indication of why she now wants to change her plea, and she declined an interview request Thursday.
Her public defender, Kirk Campbell, said West's appeal might be limited in scope, as there was no trial to raise issues for the 2nd District Court of Appeal to weigh. He said he is appointed only to file notice of the appeal and turn the case over to appeals specialists in Polk County, where the appeals court is located.
In his Friday motion to free West, Campbell wrote, "The grounds for appeal are meritorious and taken in good good faith. . . . The defendant is presently incarcerated and the defendant desires to be given liberty during the pendency of appeal."
West will have to file her own formal motion to withdraw her guilty plea, Campbell explained Thursday. As of Friday, no notice other than a letter she wrote to Cobb had been filed in court.