High court cites errors in trial of fatal DUI crash

Cy Ryan and Mary Manning

Thursday, Oct. 7, 2004 | 8:41 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The Nevada Supreme Court Wednesday ruled that Clark D. Morse should not have been convicted of six of the 10 counts involving a crash that killed one woman and left her sister a quadriplegic.

Clark D. Morse was convicted of seven counts of leaving the scene of an accident on March 11, 2000, when he rear-ended the car of Cynthia Jay-Brennan as it sat waiting behind three other vehicles at a red light on Boulder Highway.

Jay-Brennan, who was 38 years old at the time, had won a $35 million Megabucks jackpot weeks before. The accident killed her sister, Lela Ann Jay, 45, and left her crippled.

Morse drove away from the accident. He was later picked up and he had a blood alcohol level of 0.18. A level of 0.10 was considered drunk in Nevada at that time.

A jury convicted Morse of driving under the influence of alcohol resulting in a death of one person and substantial bodily harm to another. He was sentenced to consecutive 8-20 year terms on each of the two counts.

District Judge Valorie Vega also sentenced him to seven concurrent prison terms of 35 to 156 months on the counts of leaving the scene of an accident where seven persons were involved. Three of those counts were to run consecutive to the 16-40 year sentence on the other convictions.

The Supreme Court said the law allows only one charge of leaving the scene of a single accident, no matter the number of people involved. It said the attorney for Morse was ineffective for failing to raise this issue about the multiple convictions in his petition for a writ of habeas corpus before Vega.

The Supreme Court sent the case back to District Court to correct this error.

But the other convictions stand. In addition, Morse was sentenced to 30 days in jail for driving with a revoked license.

Clark County District Attorney David Roger said the legal community had expected such a decision. There have been a total of three such decisions this year handed down by the state Supreme Court.

"This isn't a surprise to us," Roger said.

The Nevada District Attorneys Association has a bill draft ready to make the statute "crystal clear" that multiple convictions can be returned by a jury, Roger said.

Sandy Heverly, executive director of Stop DUI, wants tougher drunken driver laws and plans to go to the Nevada Legislature in 2005 to change them.

Heverly wants drunken drivers to be charged with second-degree murder anytime they kill others, with no exceptions.

"It's a violent crime and the only difference is the weight of the weapon," Heverly said of her goal to toughen the penalty.

Heverly's mother died of injuries suffered years earlier in a collision caused by a drunken driver. Heverly and other family members were injured in the same crash.

After she spent years trying to get lawmakers to lower Nevada's blood-alcohol limit, last year the Legislature did change the limit to 0.08 percent, but the main reason the change passed was that the state would have lost federal highway funds if the lower blood-alcohol limit hadn't been adopted.

Court records show Morse had been arrested at least 16 times for alcohol and driving-related offenses before the accident.