Williams’ attorney to continue appeals

Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2004 | 9:52 a.m.

The U.S. Supreme Court's refusal on Monday to consider a new trial for a local woman convicted of running over and killing six teenagers while driving with remnants of marijuana in her blood is not the end of the line, her attorney said.

John Watkins, the attorney for Jessica Williams, said he will file another appeal in the federal courts bringing up the same issues he has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to address and several others, including the constitutionality of the state law that allows drivers to be prosecuted for having remnants of a drug in their system.

Also, Watkins still has an appeal before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals alleging that Williams' original trial violated her right not to be placed in double jeopardy for the same offense.

"I'm still fighting," Watkins said.

It was the second time the U.S. Supreme Court had declined to hear the case, which has also lost two appeals before the Nevada Supreme Court and one appeal in federal court. The high court refused to hear the case without comment on its merits.

"It was a long shot to begin with," Watkins said, adding that the high court receives about 6,000 cases a year and can only hear about 150. "However, we had good issues so I was optimistic."

Watkins said he is still optimistic that he will eventually prevail and free his client because jurors in her February 2001 trial did not find that Williams was impaired when her van veered off the road and plowed into the six teenagers picking up trash along Interstate 15 on March 19, 2000.

Williams, who admitted to smoking marijuana two hours before the accident and to taking Ecstasy the night before, said she fell asleep at the wheel.

Jurors acquitted Williams of driving under the influence of a controlled substance but convicted her of six counts of having a prohibited substance in her blood. She was also convicted of possessing and using marijuana. A judge sentenced Williams to 18 to 48 years in state prison.

Watkins had asked the high court to overturn a July 22 decision by the Nevada Supreme Court that said former Clark County District Judge Michael Douglas erred in granting Williams a new trial. Douglas, now a Nevada Supreme Court justice, did not take part in the July decision.

Douglas had ruled in February 2003 that Williams should not have been convicted for having carboxylic acid, or marijuana metabolite, in her system because it was not on the Board of Pharmacy's scheduled list of drugs at the time of the March 2000 accident.

The Nevada Supreme Court said the 1999 Legislature made it illegal to drive with even trace amounts of a controlled substance in one's blood or urine, including marijuana or marijuana metabolite. The court overturned Douglas' decision to give Williams a new trial.

The Nevada Supreme Court had previously upheld Williams' conviction on direct appeal when Watkins first challenged the constitutionality of the state law in 2002. Justices said in the unanimous opinion that they agreed with prosecutors that the trace-amount law "is rationally related to the state's interest in highway safety and in deterring illicit drug use."

Watkins said he believes the law is still unconstitutional under the equal protection clause because someone with a medical prescription for marijuana cannot be charged for having traces of the drug in their system but others can be. Other issues Watkins said he plans to raise in his next appeal is that Williams' blood sample was not properly refrigerated, that the person who said he analyzed the sample actually didn't, and that several other due process and procedural issues were violated.

Clark County District Attorney David Roger said he was not surprised by the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions to refuse the case and did not expect Watkins to prevail in his further appeals.

"With great respect to Mr. Watkins, we do not believe that the issues he is raising have any merit," Roger said.

Both Roger and Stop DUI executive director Sandy Heverly said they believed Nevada law was clear in making it unlawful to drive with any form of a drug still in the system.

"We felt that the laws sufficiently covered these situations and the Nevada Supreme Court agreed," Roger said.

Heverly said she was pleased by the high court's decision not to hear the case because it "relieved the victims once again from being revictimized by a second trial."

Las Vegas residents Jennifer Booth, 16; Rebeccah Glicken, 15; Scott Garner Jr., 14; Alberto Puig, 16; Anthony Smith, 14, and Malena Stoltzfus, 15, were all killed in the accident.