Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Woman gets 30 days for violating probation

A Henderson woman who pleaded guilty to talking on a cell phone and causing a collision that killed two people will spend a month in jail after she violated her probation by working out at a gym.

District Judge Nancy Saitta on Tuesday sentenced Karen Morris to 30 days in the Clark County Detention Center for violating her house arrest by exercising at a Henderson 24-Hour Fitness Center.

Morris, a local Realtor, said she misunderstood the terms of her probation. But Saitta said Morris believes she is above the law.

"There is a consistent and disturbing pattern that so long as Ms. Morris misunderstands the conditions of her freedom, that will be enough," she said.

Saitta could have reinstated Morris' suspended prison sentence of four to 12 years. She said she would consider changing the terms of Morris' probation in a July 7 hearing.

Morris, 35, was placed on five years' probation and ordered to spend 26 weekends in jail after pleading guilty to three counts of felony reckless driving in the March 2001 collision that killed Leona Greif, 61, and Marcia Nathans, 65.

A third passenger was critically injured in the crash. Authorities claim Morris was talking on her cell phone and speeding when the accident occurred.

"This was tragic," Saitta told Morris. "The fact that you have your liberty at all is a freedom."

Morris testified Tuesday that a doctor had ordered her to work out at the gym after she sustained a back injury in a second collision, in which she was the passenger. Morris' probation bans her from driving.

She said she thought she was allowed to leave her house between 5:30 a.m. and 9 p.m. to do "whatever I have to do during a normal business day."

"I thought I had told (the probation officer) I was going to the gym," she said, crying. "If I understood it wasn't something I was supposed to do, I would have asked."

Morris' attorney, Lamond Mills, said prison time was too harsh a punishment for a misunderstanding.

"In my 30 years as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've never seen someone have their probation revoked for going to the gym," he said.

But Greif's family members, who attended the hearing, said Morris had too much freedom while on house arrest and that Saitta should have imposed the initial sentence.

"There was way too much flexibility," said Anne Johnson, Greif's daughter. "Jail time is the only way what she has done will sink into her head."

Howard Saxon, Morris' probation officer, testified that he had given Morris more latitude than most people on probation because she had flexible hours as a Realtor.

Michael Palmer, of Secure Core EMS, which oversees the electronic monitoring, said he orders twice-monthly visits on most cases, but allowed Morris to check in once a month because she was following the rules.

Though Morris wore a bracelet around her wrist to alert officers of her geographic location, the tracking system does not distinguish between authorized and unauthorized activities.

Harriet Cohen, Greif's sister, was outraged that Morris was allowed to spend the entire day away from her home.

"I never heard of such a thing," she said. "It's absurd."

But the trips to the gym were the latest in several incidents in which Morris claimed to have misunderstood the terms of her probation, prosecutor Gary Booker said.

Morris was placed in house arrest after taking an unauthorized trip to Utah in March, he said. Morris said she thought she was allowed to take the trip.

"She has proven that she is going to do what she is going to do," Booker said. "The rules don't apply to her."

Morris, a single mother of a 9-year-old girl, had signed a contract with the Department of Parole and Probation that spelled out the terms of her probation.

According to the contract, Morris was only to leave her house to go to work, attend weekly religious services or shop for her basic needs.

"Frankly, I don't think it could be any clearer," Saitta said.

Saxon said he was working out on Memorial Day at the 24-Hour Fitness near Wigwam and Pecos Road when he noticed Morris. Morris' boyfriend, Todd Bergman, had driven her to and from the gym, Saxon said.

Morris was supposed to track her daily activities in a log, but trips to the gym were not listed, Saxon said.

"I was on the treadmill and I looked up and I saw the defendant working out across the gym," he said.

The gym's management later confirmed that Morris had visited the gym 13 times in the previous month, Saxon said.

Saxon arrested Morris days later. He said he would have made provisions for her to go to the gym if she had cleared it with him and provided a doctor's excuse.

Morris said she wrote in her weekly reports that she was under a doctor's care, but did not specify that she was going to the gym.

"I believed that was encompassing everything the doctor ordered," she said.

She said she had a "verbal contract" with Saxon and that he was aware that she was going to the gym in the mornings before work.

Morris said she had discussed health and fitness with Saxon on several occasions, in which Saxon told her where he worked out. She said she wouldn't have gone to that gym if she thought she was doing something wrong.

"Exercise and staying in shape was what we had in common and we discussed it freely," she said. "When he arrested me, I didn't know what I did wrong."

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