Licensed to kill: Law goes easy on deadly drivers
Daily News
By Greg Gittrich

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Nearly half the people killed in traffic accidents are pedestrians.

But fewer than one in five of the killer drivers faces serious charges. The News' Greg Gittrich looked behind last week's tragic headlines and found a hobbled legal system badly in need of repair.

The deadly impact often comes without warning - or meaningful punishment.

A taxi tears through a busy intersection. A truck hops a curb. A car speeds through a red light, only to lose control.

Every year, dozens upon dozens of pedestrians are mowed down on the city's streets. But the vast majority of the killer drivers never face serious criminal charges, the Daily News has learned.

Most are never charged at all - allowing them to immediately resume their lives while their victims' loved ones are forced to cope with a sudden tragic loss.

Between 2000 and 2002, 580 pedestrians were killed in fatal auto accidents across the city.

During those three years, only 80 people were indicted with criminally negligent homicide or vehicular manslaughter - the laws used most to punish killer drivers, The News' analysis of state court records shows.

That abysmal tally only hints at how the state legal system fails killed pedestrians; criminally negligent homicide covers a wide variety of deaths, not just those caused in vehicle accidents.

That's why The News is launching its Save a Life, Change the Law campaign, so drivers who kill are held accountable for their actions just as killers who use more conventional weapons.

The problem is the law.

"In all the cases we've ever looked at, we've never seen a sober motorist get convicted for killing a pedestrian. Zero. None," said John Kaehny, executive director of Transportation Alternatives.

"The case law in New York State is obscene," he said. "It bends over backward to accommodate drivers."

Authorities acknowledge state laws are vague and difficult to enforce.

"We do anything possible to elevate these cases to criminal status," said Brooklyn prosecutor Maureen McCormick, who specializes in auto homicide cases.

"But because the state Legislature has not made a clear distinction between what is civil negligence and what is criminal negligence, these cases are as heartbreaking as they are difficult to prove."

Mere recklessness is not enough to charge a driver with homicide, officials said.

Prosecutors must be able to prove that a driver consciously disregarded the rules of the road and knowingly created a grave risk to others.

"It's a steep threshold, and it's not well-defined," a veteran deputy district attorney said.

Over the years, a general criteria - known as the Rule of Two — has been established by case law to help determine which cases should go before a judge.

In essence, to be prosecuted with criminally negligent homicide - the lowest possible charge - killer drivers typically have to violate at least two traffic laws, such as speeding and drunken driving.

"If there are two clear and distinct acts of negligence, we are usually in a comfort zone where we feel we have a shot in court," a prosecutor explained.

Many prosecutors and relatives of killed pedestrians would like Albany to toughen legislation. But they have been ignored for years.

"If it was someone at the state Legislature who lost someone, you would damn sure see the laws updated," said Christine Sadesky, whose 62-year-old father, Gerald, a beloved Park Ave. doorman nearing his retirement, was run down near his post about a week ago.

Until the laws are changed, most killer drivers who commit a single traffic infraction will continue to avoid serious charges.

"If you kill someone with your car, you are in very good shape," said Mitchell Geizhals, whose father, Jack, 75, of Kew Gardens, Queens, was run down in Long Island last summer. "It's a good way to kill someone."

Last July, two women were crushed after a car ran a red light and touched off a ghastly crash on Queens Blvd.

Caprice Bush, 23, and Sharon Rivers, 33, were standing on a median in the middle of the dangerous boulevard when a Subaru Forester raced through a red light and clipped a BMW sport-utility vehicle.

The BMW launched into the air and landed on the women.

The driver of the Subaru, Valery Frumkin, 63, of Kew Gardens, was issued a summons. He "blanked out" before running the light, his wife has said.

An almost identical excuse is being used by the taxi driver who mowed down Sadesky's father Nov. 1 on E. 71st St. in Manhattan. The cabbie, Bern Otchere-Adjei, has said he blacked out before his cab jumped the curb. His license was suspended and his taxi medallion taken away, pending an investigation, authorities said.

He has not been charged with a crime.

"They need to go over the legislative books and update them," said Bush's mother, Sharon, 44, of Flushing. "It's not just my daughter ... This is happening all the time."

The number of pedestrian deaths in traffic accidents this year is on pace to fall by about 25% from the previous year, city records show.

But even with the expected drop, nearly half the people killed in traffic accidents will be pedestrians. And about 15,000 pedestrians will be injured in traffic accidents this year, Kaehny said.

Cindi Maurer sobbed uncontrollably last week after her daughter's 15-year-old friend, Giulia Lewis, was killed by a car on a rain-slicked road in Queens.

The driver, who was wearing only his underwear, told police it was a tragic accident. He was questioned and released without being charged.

"I hope something happens to this man," Maurer said. "He killed a child. I can't see how they could not charge him." With Bob Port and Warren Woodberry Jr.

Case 1

The red light

Icerlene Person bled to death.

The 62-year-old grandmother was standing on a sidewalk near her Harlem church in July 1999 when a minivan slammed into her. The minivan was forced off the road by a livery cab that had run a red light.

Person was conscious and complaining about chest pains when she was rushed to St. Luke's Hospital. But she died in the operating room.

The livery driver, Juan Polanco, 54, of the Bronx, was held on a charge of leaving the scene of an accident - nothing more serious than that. Person's daughter Gladie, 32, said the driver should have been charged with a more serious crime.

"They said they had to have two things on him to prosecute him," she said. "They found no drugs or nothing so they couldn't do anything."

"I mean come on - she was killed for no reason," Gladie said. "It's something you can't forget. That was my mom."

Case 2

On a hot evening in July, 75-year-old Jack Geizhals was relaxing on the boardwalk in Long Beach, L.I., with his wife.

Shortly after midnight, the pair, both Holocaust survivors from Kew Gardens, Queens, decided to walk back to their car. Geizhals never saw the red Mitsubishi Eclipse racing down West Broadway.

"My father was dragged 40 feet," said Dr. Mitchell Geizhals, 45, of Long Beach. "The car never stopped."

Geizhals died on the street. Twelve hours went by before the driver, Charlie Hamlet, turned himself in to cops.

Hamlet, a 40-year-old personal trainer, told police he knew he hit something big, but had no idea he plowed into a person.

Hamlet was charged with leaving the scene of a fatal accident — not manslaughter or murder. He was allowed to go home. The case is in court.

Geizhals' son, Jeffrey, said the spot where his father was killed is well-lit, and the road is straight and wide.

"Nothing . . . obscures vision," he wrote in a letter to Hamlet. "How could you possibly claim not to have realized that you had struck someone?"

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