Long waits for action in traffic cases can be painful for victims, but some say it helps investigations.
By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
Published April 15, 2004
TAMPA - Night after night, Becky Gage sat by her critically injured son's bedside, knowing that the man who hit him and killed his girlfriend was free, going home to his own family every night.
Days stretched into weeks.
"In our minds, he was going on with his life ... and we were in this big dark hole," Gage said, recalling the events of 10 years ago.
Finally, the man was arrested - six weeks after the crash.
"It's very frustrating," said Gage, who now is the director of victims' services for Hillsborough Mothers Against Drunk Driving and often comforts families through an agonizing wait for arrests in traffic fatalities. "But you still want the best case, and you only want to have to do this one time."
In the wake of the hit-and-run accident that killed two brothers near the University Area Center in north Tampa on March 31, there have been many calls for an immediate arrest.
Five days after the accident, a 28-year-old woman appeared at a press conference in the downtown office of her lawyer, who said she fled that night. Two weeks later, Jennifer Porter, an elementary school teacher, still has not been charged.
The question many residents are asking: Why not?
The reason, say attorneys and victims' advocates, is rather routine. Arrests in many fatal accidents, even those in which a drunken driver remains at the scene, often are delayed. Sometimes for months.
Here's why: Laboratory results on blood tests, DNA and vehicle fragments can take weeks or months; the accident scene needs to be reconstructed; witnesses need to be interviewed.
One other incentive to go slowly: the speedy trial clock. The minute a suspect is arrested, he or she has the right to a trial within six months.
Unlike a case of first-degree murder, a driver in a traffic accident with no police record is not someone police rush to get off the streets, considering the speedy trial clock, said Tampa defense attorney Victor Pellegrino.
Rushing can backfire and become a prosecutor and grieving family's worst nightmare: acquittal.
"The final outcome is what's important," said Tampa Police Sgt. David Puig, a member of TPD's auto theft and hit-and-run squad. "In the scheme of things, a couple of months is nothing if you're looking at 15 years in prison."
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The past few years alone provide a slew of examples where investigators delayed arresting suspects in fatal accidents. Among them:
Five weeks after a 39-year-old jogger died on a grassy median along Bayshore Boulevard in February, authorities arrested the motorcyclist who they say slammed into her at an estimated 80 mph. William R. Napier was charged with vehicular homicide.
In another Bayshore accident, Tampa police investigated six months before citing Charles Gable Yerrid in February with unlawful speed involving death. At the same time, prosecutors decided they did not have enough of a case to file more serious charges against the 17-year-old son of Tampa attorney Steve Yerrid because they said the woman he hit and killed contributed to the crash by attempting an illegal left turn.
Hillsborough County officials investigated three months before charging Michael Jones with three counts of DUI manslaughter in December 1999. Jones, then 17, had a blood-alcohol count of 0.12 and traces of the sedative Midazolam in his system when he crashed, killing three teenage passengers, officials said. The legal blood alcohol limit is 0.08. Jones was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
In Pasco County, Florida Highway Patrol officers investigated two months before arresting 20-year-old Tihomir Pozderac on DUI manslaughter charges after a head-on crash near Wesley Chapel on Sept. 21. Pozderac was driving north in the southbound lanes of Interstate 75 about 5 a.m. between State Road 56 and State Road 54. He crashed into 53-year-old Christine "Chrissy" Donovan of Safety Harbor. Pozderac has pleaded guilty and awaits sentencing.
And it took more than four months for officials in Pasco to arrest 21-year-old Shanna Jane West in April 2001. The night before the fatal accident in November 2000, authorities said, West had posted bail on another DUI charge, got high on GHB (known as the date rape drug), and swerved across the center line on U.S. 41 in Land O'Lakes, slamming into a car carrying four people. The accident killed 54-year-old Barbara Mercer of Dade City. In January 2003, West was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
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A few black activists have raised another question in the Jennifer Porter case: Is the delay in bringing charges because she is white?
"As African people living in America and Tampa, our experience is ... whether we are innocent or guilty, the process is, if you are accused of a crime, you go to jail," said Connie Burton, a spokeswoman with the Tampa branch of the Uhuru movement.
The Times attempted to compare arrest speeds of traffic violators in Hillsborough County, but the Sheriff's Office does not keep track of fatal traffic accidents and arrest dates by race.
Attorneys, investigators and victims' advocates say the speed of arrests appears to vary by circumstances and investigating agency, not by race.
Michelle Patty, a black activist and family friend of the children killed in the accident - 13-year-old Bryant Wilkins and his 3-year-old brother Durontae Caldwell - said the Uhurus do not speak for everyone in the African-American community. She predicted a premature arrest could be "devastating."
"We do know that there has been unfair treatment in this community, but we know there has been justice," she said. "Let the system work."
