Williams’ attorney will try new appeal

Dan Kulin

Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2002 | 9:30 a.m.

The nation's highest court decided it will not immediately hear the appeal of a former Las Vegas stripper convicted of having drugs in her system when she crashed her van in a highway median, killing six teenagers, her attorney said Monday.

But the U.S. Supreme Court could see Jessica Williams' case in the future if appeals bring it through the lower federal courts, Williams' lawyer John G. Watkins said.

"I knew it was a long shot, but I was willing to take it," Watkins said about trying to get the case before the nation's highest court immediately.

Watkins said he plans to file an appeal in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas in about two weeks. If the appeal is unsuccessful there, Watkins said he would appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and then the Supreme Court again.

The court's decision not to hear the case now has "nothing to do with the merits of the case," he said.

In August the Nevada Supreme Court upheld Williams' conviction, despite Watkins' argument that no correlation existed between impairment and the drug levels that state law prohibits.

Williams admitted to police after the March 2000 crash that she had used marijuana before the accident and that she had used Ecstasy the night before.

The six teens -- Jennifer Booth, 16, Scott Garner Jr., 14, Rebeccah Glicken, 15, Alberto Puig, 16, Anthony Smith, 14 and Maleyna Stoltzfus, 15 -- were hit while picking up litter with other youths assigned by a Clark County youthful offender program to work off minor sentences.

Watkins told a Clark County District Court jury that Williams simply fell asleep.

He argued that although tests found more than the allowable limit of marijuana's active ingredient in her blood, Williams was not impaired.

Jurors acquitted Williams in February 2001 of felony driving under the influence of a controlled substance but convicted her of driving with a prohibited substance in her blood. A judge sentenced Williams to 18 to 48 years in state prison.

Watkins asked the U.S. Supreme Court to find Nevada's law on driving under the influence of prohibited substances unconstitutional.

He also asked the court to free Williams because he said investigators improperly stored blood evidence, leaving it unavailable for further testing by the defense.