Judge puts sentencing on hold in car crash
Posted on Saturday, August 2, 2008
A Pulaski County circuit judge was forced to delay sentencing Thursday for a Cabot woman who crippled a woman and scarred a man in a car crash after jurors recommended a punishment that exceeded the court’s authority.
After convicting Jane Elizabeth Stowell, 42, of second-degree battery, the nine men and three women rejected prison time for her. Instead, jurors recommended that she should be sentenced to two or three years in a mental institution, serve at least four years on probation, pay as much as $ 3, 000 in fines and have her driver’s license permanently revoked. Stowell didn’t testify.
The mental institution provision and driver’s license revocation are beyond the judge’s powers, but less clear is whether the court can order both a fine and probation. Sentencing laws do allow imposing a fine with prison time or a fine alone, but the laws on combining a fine and probation are less clear. Circuit Judge John Langston set an Aug. 26 sentencing hearing to give prosecutors, defense attorneys and his own staff time to research sentencing laws.
Stowell faced a maximum six years in prison when jurors capped her two-day trial Thursday by finding her guilty of second-degree battery, a Class D felony, for the August 2006 car crash on U. S. 67 / 167 in North Little Rock that left Stephanie Ruiz of Jacksonville partially paralyzed. Ruiz, 24, can barely walk, even using a walker, she testified. And her ability to speak has been affected.
“The right side — it doesn’t want to work,” Ruiz testified through tears. “I sound like a 5-year-old.”
Also injured in the crash was her boyfriend’s brother, Christopher Cook, and jurors reduced a second second-degree battery charge representing his injuries to a misdemeanor. The jury also rejected a misdemeanor drivingwhile-intoxicated count. Prosecutors argued that Stowell had taken too much of her psychiatric medication to have been driving.
According to trial testimony, Stowell told state troopers that she crashed her light-blue Honda S 2000 convertible into Ruiz’s yellow Chevrolet S-10 pickup while trying to use her shoe to pick up a cell phone on the passenger floorboard. Witnesses told the jury that Stowell was exceeding 55 miles per hour when she veered toward a concrete barrier then turned back hard into Ruiz’s pickup. Ruiz’s boyfriend, Timothy Cook, was unharmed, while Cook’s mother, Kristina Watson, suffered minor injuries.
But Christopher Cook, who was riding in Ruiz’s truck bed, testified he suffered serious “road rash” scrapes when he was thrown out of the pickup as it rolled. The scrapes to his head, chest, arms and legs left him looking like a burn victim, and he still has several scars, he testified.
The Stowell vehicle traveled 70 feet after the impact, striking the barrier and sliding another 55 feet. Stowell went to the hospital, but refused treatment. The trooper who investigated the wreck reported Stowell showed him a box containing pills. Gerald Seller, who has since left the force, said Stowell didn’t seem to be upset by the crash, had a hard time standing and slurred her words. A drug test showed tranquilizers, anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic medications, for which she had prescriptions.
Her psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Owings, co-medical director of The Bridgeway hospital in North Little Rock, testified he has been treating Stowell for more than 10 years. He told jurors that he didn’t believe Stowell was overmedicated at the time of the crash. She’s been treated for depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder almost half her life, and he said her body absorbed her medications before the crash. Her difficulty in standing was due to injuries she’d suffered in a 1995 car accident, Owings told jurors. He said a medical condition makes speaking difficult for her. The aloof manner reported by the trooper was also likely to be from her traumatic reaction to being in another crash, he said.
Defense attorney Jack Lassiter urged jurors not to be swayed by their sympathies for Ruiz, but to look at all of the facts of the crash. He said prosecutors wanted the jury to speculate about the effects of the medication on his client because they couldn’t prove Stowell was affected.
“It’s not against the law to drive on prescription medication,” he told jurors, repeating the statement at least six times. “They want you to guess. Don’t guess. Take the evidence.”
Deputy prosecutor Jeanna Sherrill told jurors that Stowell was risking everyone’s life on the day of the crash.
“It’s not against the law to drive on prescription medication,” Sherrill said. “It is against the law to drive when you are on something that alters your motor skills substantially and alters your judgment substantially, and you become a danger.”
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