June 06, 2008 12:34 am
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By Jeff Lehr
jlehr@joplinglobe.com
GALENA, Mo. — A Stone County jury Thursday night convicted Carthage teenager Jarub R. Baird of second-degree involuntary manslaughter and second-degree assault in a traffic accident that took the life of 15-year-old Hannah Smallwood and injured two other Carthage Senior High School students.
At issue in the two-day trial was the speed of the car Baird, 18, was driving Dec. 8, 2006, when it crashed along County Road 120 near Carthage, and whether he had shown conscious disregard for the lives and well-being of the other occupants of the vehicle by driving at an excessive rate of speed on an icy road.
Baird was tried on charges of first-degree manslaughter in the death of Smallwood and first-degree assault in the injury of Colby Johnson, but the jury exercised its option to reduce the charges in its finding of guilty.
Judge Gayle Crane of Jasper County Circuit Court ordered a pre-sentence investigation and designated Aug. 14 as the date for sentencing.
The car left the roadway, sheared a utility pole off at its base, slammed through a barbed-wire fence line and rolled about the length of a football field before coming to rest on its side in a snow-covered field.
Three of the four teenagers in the Mazda Millenia, including Baird, who was 17, were not wearing seat belts and were thrown from the vehicle. Smallwood, who was sitting in the back seat with boyfriend Johnson, then 16, was thrown through the car’s windshield and died at the scene.
Johnson suffered a brain injury, a broken femur and three broken bones in a hand. Baird walked away with minor injuries. Calee Houlihan, who was sitting in the front passenger seat and had put on her seat belt moments before the crash, also suffered only minor injuries.
The prosecution maintained that the car was traveling at least 100 mph when it left the roadway. Johnson and Houlihan both testified that they had glanced at the car’s speedometer before the crash and saw the gauge reading 110 mph.
A Missouri State Highway Patrol accident reconstruction expert, Lt. Albert Brown, calculated that the vehicle was traveling at least 99 mph when it left the road.
“He’s doing that at nighttime,” Assistant Jasper County Prosecutor Kimberly Fisher told jurors. “He’s doing that when just a few minutes (earlier), he had been on ice. He knew there was a substantial risk of ice.”
Baird’s attorneys argued that their client had volunteered to drive the vehicle that night because the others had been drinking and he had not. He offered to be their designated driver and actually prevented Houlihan from driving under the influence, attorney Phil Glades said.
Glades said it was logically inconsistent to believe that Baird would offer to serve as designated driver only to then put all their lives at risk by deliberately driving in a reckless manner. While Baird may have been going too fast when he hit a patch of ice on the road, he did not display a conscious disregard for the other teens’ lives, the defense lawyer said.
The defense also called the Highway Patrol expert’s calculations of the speed of the car into question by calling two expert witnesses of their own to dispute his methods and findings.
Bruno Schmidt, a physics professor at Missouri State University and an accident reconstruction specialist, said the Missouri State Highway Patrol often uses smaller “middle ordinants,” certain measurements taken from tire marks on pavement, to calculate “the critical speed of the yaw” of a vehicle, against the recommendations of accepted authorities in the field. He said the consequence can be overestimation of such speeds.
Schmidt bracketed what he considers the more plausible speed of the teens’ vehicle at 75 to 80 mph.
The Jasper County prosecutors called as witnesses a Carthage couple who watched the accident from a distance to strengthen the argument that Baird was driving too fast and that he showed a callous disregard for the other youths involved.
Mike and Barbara Evans were driving in the same direction along County Road 120 when they were passed by the Mazda. Barbara Evans testified that she commented to her husband about how fast the vehicle was going and that it had better slow down by the time it reached an upcoming T-intersection. Mike Evans told an investigating state trooper that he thought the car was going 55 to 70 mph when it passed them.
The couple testified that they crested a hill moments later and watched the car crash in the distance ahead of them. They hurried to the scene and parked with their headlights illuminating the field where it crashed.
Barbara Evans told the court that she could see two of the teens on the ground in the field. She said Baird and a girl were walking toward them. Baird had no shoes on and was holding his pants up as he spoke excitedly on a cell phone to a friend, she said.
“He didn’t act concerned about the kids who were in the field,” Barbara Evans said.
She said she instead heard him tell his friend over the phone: “Dude, we flew, man. Seriously, dude.”
Barbara Evans acknowledged on cross-examination by Glades that she had no medical training or experience with people in shock and could not have known whether Baird was exhibiting symptoms of shock. But state Trooper Joseph Drum also testified that Baird appeared excited to him when he spoke to him in the back of an ambulance at the scene.
The prosecution also emphasized the testimony of Houlihan, who said she saw the speedometer reading 110 mph. She testified that it scared her, and she told Baird as she put her seat belt on that if anything happened, they would all die. She told the court that he responded that if anything happened, all the seat belt would do is sever her body in pieces.
Baird’s attorneys were able, to some degree, to shake the credibility of Johnson’s testimony that he saw the same speed on the gauge. They confirmed through other witnesses that he initially told a state trooper that he did not even recall who was driving, and that he believed they were going about 80 mph. He reportedly told another state trooper it was 70 mph.
But Fisher pointed out in closing arguments that Houlihan did not suffer a brain injury, and that her testimony remained consistent.
“She has never wavered from that,” Fisher told jurors.
Venue change
The trial of Carthage teen Jarub Baird was moved from Jasper County to Stone County because of defense claims of excessive publicity.
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