NY Prosecutor: No charges in fatal wrong-way crash

[liberalhistorian]

Source: Associated Press

By JIM FITZGERALD, Associated Press Writer Jim Fitzgerald, Associated Press Writer – 39 mins ago
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. – The only person who could have been charged in a wrong-way crash that killed eight people was the drunken and stoned woman who caused the wreck and died in it, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

There was no evidence that Diane Schuler had been drinking or smoking marijuana before she and her husband left in separate vehicles from an upstate campground on July 26 to drive back to their home in West Babylon, Westchester District Attorney Janet DiFiore said.

"Diane Schuler died in the crash and the charges died with her," DiFiore told reporters.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090818/ap_on_re_us/us_wrong_way_crash

---

This seems more than fair to me. There was no evidence the husband knew anything, and he and his family have also suffered horrendous losses. The SUV victims' family approves as well.

I still have a lot of questions about this, there's still a lot that doesn't make any sense. I have a hard time believing she'd be drinking that much and smoking weed in just a couple of hours while driving children. And those who saw her at the McDonald's where they stopped saw no signs of drinking or doping, either. There are several possible medical conditions that can mimic drug use and that are a possibility here and I agree with the husband's efforts to exhume the body and do an independent autopsy. Government labs are not, in any way, infallible.

[onehandle]

1. Dr. Peter Venkman: "You're right, no human being would stack books like this." nt

[liberalhistorian]

2. Ummm............

okay, whatever. :eyes:

[customerserviceguy]

3. I had an ex who was quite the closet drinker

and I really didn't know the extent of it until after she moved out. The husband may have escaped criminal charges, but the standard of proof is far lower for a civil suit than for a criminal charge. He's not out of the woods yet on this.

[wordpix]

6. I had a landlord who used to hide the stuff in the garage

When I drove in from work, he was always there, acting like he was putting something away besides the bottle of booze it usually was.

[Historic NY]

4. Its kind of hard to indict the Corpus delicti criminally, civilly its a strong case..

that insurance company is going to kick up lots of Greenbacks.

[LisaL]

5. There was a broken bottle of vodka found

at the crush scene. What kind of medical condition would produce that? By the way of course they weren't going to criminally charge anyone. The woman is dead.

[Psephos]

7. I found a broken pint bottle of Jim Beam out behind my car this weekend

I dunno, you think it's possible the broken bottle of vodka could have come from another source?

Seems to me that broken liquor bottles are somewhere between flattened squirrels and cigarette butts on the list of things commonly found near roadways.

[LisaL]

8. Oh give me a break.

Her husband has already said they had the vodka with them at the camp because he likes an occasional drink.

[Psephos]

9. Let's put it another way...

If the bottle found at the site was known to have been already in the vehicle, then you have a good point. (In any case, I'm chastened by my not having read the posted article in its entirety. :spank: )

But the bottle still remains circumstantial evidence.

The part that makes no sense is that a sober career woman without a history of substance abuse or reckless behavior would load up her kids, get on the highway, guzzle a large amount of liquor and smoke a large amount of mj, then drive two miles going the wrong way on the freeway. Autopsy shows no evidence of a hard drinking habit, corroborating an investigation revealing she was a social drinker at most.

It takes at least as much faith to believe that the coroner and/or crime lab are infallible here than to believe this mom would do all that. Neither is impossible, but both are a serious stretch.

We only know what we read. This is likely a story where what we haven't read holds the key.

[LisaL]

11. The woman drove the wrong way, killed seven people and

herself. The tox screen showed she had alcohol (twice the legal limit) and pot in her system, and the broken bottle of vodka was found at the crush scene. Her husband admits they had vodka at the camp with them.
If you can come up with a medical condition that fits all this, I am all ears.

[liberalhistorian]

21. You have such a bee in your bonnet about this case and

this woman and her family, as evidenced in this thread and most of the others here dealing with this subject; why, then, don't you just dig her up and kill her again? Even that wouldn't appear to satisfy you.

You keep convieniently forgetting that this woman's husband lost his wife and daughter, and her family not just her and her daughter but three neices and granddaughters as well. They are just as devastated and grief-stricken as the other family, and it's even harder for them because they have to deal with people like you who don't recognize that grief because of the alleged culpability of the driver. You can't "punish" the husband any more than he already is, nor the rest of her family. I say alleged because, frankly, there are still a lot of questions and things that don't make sense.

And as for holding him responsible, there was no evidence in the autopsy that she had a drinking or drug problem. Believe me, especially in the case of alcohol, if a person has a problem like that, it WILL show up in several ways in the body in an autopsy. And, being in the legal field, I have little faith in the infallibility of toxicology and testing labs. They make a ton of mistakes all of the time that then take an Act of God to reverse precisely because of their perceived "infallibility."

[KansDem]

26. You raise an interesting point about the Jim Beam bottle...

I live on a moderately busy street. Many Saturday and Sunday mornings I go out into my front yard and find empty liquor and beer bottles. But, as you observed, many of the liquor bottles are Jim Beam, Smirnoff, etc. and the beer bottles are usually Bud Lite, Pabst, Miller Light, etc.

While picking these up to dispose of, I often wonder why I don't see empty Bombay Sapphire or Lagavulin liquor bottles or empty Guinness or Samuel Smith beer bottles.

Could we make an inference of the type of drinker who will drive around in the night drinking only to dispose of the empties on some stranger's lawn?

I've lived here 21 years... Who knows, maybe I'm looking forward to a time when I see a Jaguar drive by and an empty 18-year-old Maccallan scotch bottle come flying out an open window...

on edit: I acknowledge that this is off-topic...

[dysfunctional press]

10. iirc- the husband said that they took the same bottle of vodka back and forth

to the campground all summer, or something to that effect- which i find entirely believable.

[LisaL]

12. So how did her blood alcohol level ended up being twice

the legal limit per the toxicology report? Do tell.
And why does her toxicology report shows pot in her system?
Per the police, the husband won't answer any questions about the use of pot.

"Daniel Schuler, a Nassau County public safety officer who is assigned to a security detail at a park, cooperated with investigators "to the extent his lawyer allowed him to," state police Maj. William Carey said. When asked for clarification, Carey said Daniel Schuler declined to answer any questions regarding marijuana use."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090818/ap_on_re_us/us_wrong_way_crash

[dysfunctional press]

13. the toxicology report may be mistaken, for one thing.

as stated upthread- the labs aren't infallible, as well as the possibility of body processes that incorrectly register alcohol results on tests.

as far as the pot use- the way that she was driving was not at all indicative of someone who was a regular pot smoker. and the pot would not 'compound' the effects of alcohol in that way, either.

whatever happened with the 5-year old boy? has anyone been able to talk to him yet? if she WAS drinking/smoking while driving- there's a chance that he might have been witness to it.

[LisaL]

14. Well what stops the husband from retesting?

His lawyer even tried to claim anbesol caused her to have that high a BAC.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32404736/ns/local_news-new_york_ny/

By the way I wouldn't pin any hopes that a five year old with head trauma would be able to tell anything.

[dysfunctional press]

15. i have no idea...it doesn't concern me, so i haven't really followed it at all.

i guess that i'm just not one of those sick, twisted fucks who has to live and breathe every inch of the story...:shrug:

[LisaL]

16. And what do you call someone who argues about something

her or she has no clue about?

[dysfunctional press]

19. a stupid bitch...?

:shrug:

[liberalhistorian]

20. The last I heard he was, indeed, planning on

an exhumation for an independent autopsy.

[sabrina 1]

17. The bottle wasn't found until several days

after the accident, according to what I read. If the police had found it they would not have initially said they did not think it was an alcohol-related accident.

Investigators found it. Were they insurance investigators? I don't know, but while I do not wish to go into it, from personal experience, anything that minimizes the cost to insurance companies, is not beyond the realm of possibility.

I was not aware, eg, that a family has no say when a loved one is killed in an accident, whether or not there ought to be an autopsy. I discovered that when a close friend was killed and the family was in shock when they received a call from the coroner's office telling them 'the body will be released after the autopsy'. They objected saying they had not authorized an autopsy and the very idea was disturbing to them at that time. They were told 'it's the law'.

The law was supported by the Insurance industry and was very controversial at the time. It benefits them if they can find even a trace of alcohol in a driver who has been killed and many people have doubted the results of some of those autopsies but do not have the means to have an independent autopsy done.

This case bothers me also. Someone would have known if this woman was a druggie or alcoholic, yet every one who knew here say they never saw her drinking or smoking and that she was a caring, wonderful mother. Alcoholics and drug addicts are not often the best parents. Her brother trusted her with his three children. Not something anyone would do if they knew the driver had a drinking problem. Even enablers have their limits and for most people, and putting their own children at risk would be a line they would not cross to enable an alcoholic.

[LisaL]

18. How on Earth would finding a bottle minimize a cost to the

insurance investigators? The bottle was broken. It was found by accident reconstruction unit.

"State police Lt. Dominick Chiumento said investigators initially did not believe drugs or alcohol were involved because there was no obvious evidence at the crash scene.

A broken, 1.75-liter bottle of vodka was found days after the crash when the police collision reconstruction unit began examining debris from the vehicle.

"You couldn't see it at first. I even looked at photos of the van and wouldn't have been able to see it," Chiumento said."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jAJAp341-paJmsICuZzSIf5lmV6wD99SUMR84

[OneBlueSky]

24. about that broken bottle . . .

during the days immediately following the crash, local police said several times that they found no evidence that the driver had been drinking . . . then, on the day the the test results were announced three weeks later, all of a sudden they find this broken vodka bottle in the car . . . wtf? . . .

I'm with the original poster on this one . . . there is just too much that makes absolutely no sense here, beginning with the several week delay in finding the bottle . . . the driver apparently wasn't drunk when she left the camp, wasn't drunk at the McDonalds at about 10:30, and gave no indication that she was drunk when talking to her brother just a half hour or so before the tragedy . . . how she could have downed all that liquor -- and why the little girl didn't mention that her aunt was drinking when she spoke on the phone with her father during that same conversation -- just doesn't make sense . . . there also seems to be no one who ever saw this lady drink in excess or be anything but a loving and caring mother to her kids . . .

I understand what the toxicology tests say, but I've learned that everything isn't always what it seems to be . . . could it be possible that the authorities decided to make this woman a graphic example of what can happen if you drink and drive by faking the test results? . . . there was a time when I'd have thought that kind of speculation was totally absurd -- but no more . . . in this day and age, with all that's gone down since 9/11, just about anything is possible in my book . . .

all I know is that the story the authorities have spun in this case just doesn't square with a common sense look at the evidence and what everyone had to say about this woman and the care she exhibited with her children . . . and that business of not finding the liquor bottle until three weeks after the accident really bothers me, since I specifically recall a police spokesman saying that they had found no such evidence in the day or two after the crash . . .

the whole story just doesn't make sense to me . . .

[dustbunnie]

22. This story reminds me alot of the Lady Di/Henri Paul crash.

The toxicology reports showed incredible amounts of alcohol in his system, although there were security cameras depicting him before the crash as seemingly normal. The family was aghast and claimed Paul didn't drink excessively. Some articles at the time quoted experts musing on errors and other reasons why his blood alcohol level might've been so high. It's such a strangely similar story.

[LisaL]

23. Many conspiracy theories with Paul, that's for sure.

[LiberalEsto]

25. I once had a roommate whose body made alcohol

She used to get stoned and loopy even though she didn't drink alcohol or use drugs. She was afraid to drive. After she saw all kinds of specialists it was discovered that her body manufactured alcohol from food. This was back in 1972.

I don't know what happened to her or how it was treated.