August 20, 2008
LIMO CRASH TRIAL JUDGE SEQUESTERS JURY
No verdict, no going home
After jurors says they’re deadlocked in DWI case, judge orders panel back to work, isolates them
The frustration on the faces of the jurors was reflected in the faces of others in the courtroom, as Acting State Supreme Court Justice Alan Honorof read aloud the note saying the jury in Martin Heidgen's murder trial could not reach a verdict.
Honorof had already decided what he would do. Effective at 12:30 p.m., the jury would be sequestered. They had only an hour and a half to go home and pack an overnight bag.
"The issues in this case are enormously complicated," he told jurors. To their suggestion that they might be deadlocked, he said, "It is much, much too early in these proceedings to even address that."
Sequestering the jury - a rarity, especially after a jury has begun deliberating - was just the latest in a series of unexpected events in the trial.
Heidgen, 25, of Valley Stream, is accused of driving drunk the wrong way on the Meadowbrook Parkway in July 2005, hitting a limousine as it returned from a wedding in Bayville. Killed were the driver, Stanley Rabinowitz, 59, of Farmingdale, and Katie Flynn, 7, of Long Beach, who had been a flower girl in her aunt's wedding.
Outside the courtroom, relatives of both victims railed at the jury's delay in making a decision.
"It's gone from annoyance to some anxiety to flat-out anger," said Neil Flynn, Katie's father. "I want justice."
As hordes of news cameras and dozens of family members milled outside the courtroom on the fourth day of jury deliberations, the mood was increasingly tense. The trial has been the focus of such intense attention and so full of unexpected turns that the people most affected by it seem ever braced for yet another surprise.
Charging Heidgen with murder at all was the first twist, because it is rare to charge an accused drunken driver with murder. Then, early in the trial, Honorof made a bold decision to throw out a blood test that showed Heidgen had roughly 14 drinks in his system at the time of the crash, after State Police admitted mishandling the blood sample. Later, after Honorof let prosecutors take a saliva swab from Heidgen to confirm through DNA testing that the blood sample was his, prosecutors said Heidgen intentionally tried to trip up the test by putting another man's body fluid in his mouth before the swab was taken.
Finally, prosecutors introduced a letter Heidgen wrote from jail to a friend, in which he said he had used movie lines to concoct a lie to tell police after the crash, so he could protect friends whose party he attended earlier that night. That story ultimately became a major part of the murder case because he told police he was feeling desperate when he got drunk and got into his car.
To convict Heidgen of murder, prosecutors must prove Heidgen did not care if he killed anyone when he drove the wrong way on the parkway.
Heidgen is charged with two counts of second-degree murder. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 25 years to life in prison.
If the jury finds Heidgen not guilty, it can consider a lesser charge of second-degree manslaughter. The maximum for that crime is 5 to 15 years in prison. And if the jury finds Heidgen not guilty of both murder and manslaughter, it can consider the charge of criminally negligent homicide, for which the maximum sentence is 1 1/3 to 4 years.
Outside the courtroom, family members speculated about which way jurors are leaning and who the holdouts might be. They dissected every gesture they saw jurors making, noticing that certain groups of them seemed to be huddled together and whispering when evidence was read back to them last week.
Honorof has given no indication of how long he would make the jury deliberate before declaring a mistrial. Neil and Jennifer Flynn, Katie's parents, said they would prefer a mistrial to a murder acquittal.
"Anything less than a murder conviction would be an offense to my daughter's memory," Neil Flynn said.
The decision to be made
Charges in the limo crash trial:
Martin Heidgen is charged with two counts of second-degree murder. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 25 years to life in prison.
If the jury finds Heidgen not guilty, it can consider a lesser charge of second-degree manslaughter. The maximum for that crime is 5 to 15 years in prison.
Copyright © 2008, Newsday Inc.
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