NEW PORT RICHEY - The arguments were largely the same. The evidence, too. And once again Laura Lee Roberts broke down in tears as the jury verdict was read.
Only this time, she was cleared, found not guilty Thursday night on two counts of culpable negligence manslaughter in the February 2000 deaths of two women.
"Thank you. Thank you," she sobbed to her attorney, Fredrick Susaneck. She will remain in custody on another charge but told Susaneck she was soon going home "to see my mother."
The decision in the retrial stunned members of the audience, including a man who lost both his mother and his girlfriend in the crash on U.S. 19, and handed a rare defeat to prosecutor Mike Halkitis.
"Terrible job. Terrible job. You should be ashamed of yourselves," William Anderson said as the jury filed out of the courtroom. The crash that took two women from his life was caused, prosecutors say, when Roberts crossed the busy highway on a bicycle.
Halkitis said throughout this trial that Roberts was under the influence of alcohol and prescription drugs during the crash. Evidence and expert testimony backed him up. But a juror said the panel was swayed upon hearing that the 41-year-old Roberts was bipolar and needed medication.
"We thought she was negligent but not culpable," said Mark Rubin, 30, of New Port Richey.
Roberts, who had been sentenced last November to 20 years in prison, won a new trial in January after a judge agreed the jury should have been allowed to consider excusable homicide - essentially causing the deaths by accident.
Her attorney said in his closing argument Thursday that the deaths, while horrible, were the result of an accident, not a criminal act. He said the prescription drugs that blood tests showed in her system were legally prescribed.
Expert witnesses testified, as they did in the first trial, that on Feb. 27, 2000, Roberts was riding a bicycle on U.S. 19 while she had a blood-alcohol level of 0.07. That is just under the level that Florida law presumes impairment, 0.08, but she also had prescription drugs in her system.
Anderson, who was visiting Florida from New Jersey, had to swerve his rented Chevrolet Monte Carlo to avoid hitting Roberts near Puffin Lane in Hudson. He crossed the median and struck a northbound pickup truck. Anderson's passengers, his mother, 77-year-old Virginia Anderson, and his girlfriend, 50-year-old Marlene Gorbich, died from injuries.
Riding a bike after drinking alcohol and taking mediation, Halkitis said, showed absolute disregard for the safety of others. "She's out of it folks," he told the jury. "She gets on that bicycle. She doesn't look left. She doesn't look right."
In addition to physical evidence, Halkitis used Roberts' own words to show she was impaired. A Florida Highway Patrol trooper testified she told him at the scene: "Some a------ hit me and I go to jail for DUI."
Roberts has previous convictions in Florida for DUI in 1993 and attempting to purchase cocaine in 2001. She skipped bail in 2002, delaying the case involving the Hudson crash. She was arrested in Nassau County, N.Y., on a drunken driving charge later that year and brought back to Florida to stand trial.
