Williams gets another chance with new trial

Erica D. Johnson

Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2003 | 11:11 a.m.

A District Court judge Tuesday ordered a new trial for Jessica Williams, the Las Vegas woman convicted of having drugs in her system when she ran over a group of teenagers, killing six.

Judge Michael Douglas overturned Williams' conviction on six counts of driving under the influence of a controlled substance. Williams, 23, was serving an 18- to 48-year prison sentence for the 2000 incident.

Williams was driving a van that hit the teens, who were picking up trash in the Interstate 15 median as part of a juvenile justice program.

Douglas' decision doesn't affect Williams' two separate convictions of possession of a controlled substance and use of a controlled substance.

A 12- to 36-month sentence for each of those two crimes was suspended when she was originally sentenced and she was placed on probation for those crimes alone.

Jurors had determined that Williams was not impaired at the time of the accident, but convicted her under a DUI law that establishes illegal levels of THC, a marijuana derivative. Prosecutors also had pointed to levels of carboxylic acid in her system as evidence. The body breaks THC down into carboxylic acid, which is known as a marijuana metabolite.

Defense attorney John Watkins argued that the verdict did not specify which theory convinced the jury, so the conviction had to be overturned.

Douglas agreed with Watkins that carboxylic acid is not listed on Nevada's prohibited substance statute and ordered a new trial. The judge gave prosecutors two weeks to appeal his decision.

Watkins said his client was "improperly convicted."

"Obviously I was correct because the judge also held that she was wrongfully convicted," Watkins said.

Watkins had previously appealed the jury verdict to the state Supreme Court arguing procedural issues and questioning whether the law was constitutional. That appeal was unsuccessful.

Watkins said he had not had the opportunity to discuss the ruling with Williams as of Tuesday evening.

"She's just a very frail young woman," he said. "She doesn't know what's going on. She's very scared."

Williams was recently moved from the Nevada State Prison for women to the Clark County Detention Center, Watkins said. He said he would file a motion asking Douglas to set bail.

District Attorney David Roger said he would discuss the matter with chief deputy district attorneys Gary Booker and Bruce Nelson, who worked on the case, before deciding whether to appeal Douglas' decision.

Brigitte Smith, whose 14-year-old son Anthony was killed in the collision, was outraged at the ruling.

"We can't even deal with our grief because every five or six months this goes on," she said. "It's all about her. It's like our kids don't exist. What about the lives she took?"

A new trial would do nothing more than re-traumatize the family members of the victims, said Sandy Heverly, executive director of Stop DUI, an activist group against drunk driving.

"This argument is over the language of the law, but we all know the intent of the Legislature was to stop people from driving under the influence of marijuana," she said.

Heverly said she suspects the ruling will bring similar appeals from other defendants prosecuted under the statute.

"It could open a whole can of worms," she said.

Roger agreed it could prompt similar appeals, but said convictions are not overturned often.

"It's certainly the exception and not the rule to have a case of this magnitude reversed on a technicality," he said. "But it does happen. It's a legal issue and the judge saw it differently than our office."

The Nevada Supreme Court upheld Williams' conviction in August 2002, when Watkins challenged the legality of the driving under a prohibited substance law.

Watkins, in a hearing two weeks ago, argued in a new appeal that jurors convicted Williams under two alternate theories: that the THC level in Williams' system at the time of the March 2000 accident was above what the law defined as under the influence, and that carboxylic acid showed she had smoked marijuana.

Carboxylic acid, the substance produced when the body breaks down THC, has no effect on the mental state of the user, Watkins said.

Prosecutors had argued that because carboxylic acid is the metabolite of marijuana, the statute implies that it is prohibited.

If prosecutors retry the case, they will have to argue a different theory, Roger said.

"We would retry her only on those six counts overturned and we would be limited to theory that she had THC, not the metabolite carboxylic acid in her system," he said.

Smith, the only parent who attended Tuesday's hearing, called the ruling a "slap in the face" based only on semantics. Williams doesn't deserve a new trial, she said.

"I wish they'd let her do her time and leave it alone," Smith said. "She's getting treated like a queen. She's eating three meals a day. And my tax dollars are paying for it."

Watkins said he didn't raise the carboxylic acid issue sooner because he had not realized it wasn't listed on the prohibited substance list.