The Utah Court of Appeals has reversed the negligent homicide conviction of Carl John Holm, who caused a fatal crash in 2012 when he ran a red light.
The court said in a 3-0 decision that 3rd District Judge Katie Bernards-Goodman should have allowed follow-up questioning of potential jurors who indicated they or someone close to them had been in a serious car accident.
Without further questioning, there was a dearth of information needed to ferret out a potential juror’s bias, and the right to the informed exercise of peremptory challenges — which are made to exclude someone from a jury without giving a specific reason — was “significantly impaired,” the court said.
After a three-day trial, a jury convicted Holm in May 2015 of one count of class A misdemeanor negligent criminal homicide, and Bernards-Goodman sentenced the West Jordan man to the maximum sentence of a year in jail, with credit for the 67 days he had already served.
The Court of Appeals ruling, handed down Thursday, sends the case back to 3rd District Court for a new trial.
Holm, now 53, was seen swerving in and out of his lane on Sept. 22, 2012, as he drove north on Bangerter Highway in Salt Lake County, according to police. One witness said the vehicle was traveling between 80 and 100 mph in a 55-mph zone and several people told investigators that Holm ran a red light at the intersection of State Road 201, where his minivan collided head-on with a Honda Accord.
Francisco Garica Ramirez, who was in the front seat of the Accord, had blunt force trauma to his chest and died from those injuries, court documents say.
During questioning of a pool of about 30 prospective jurors, Bernards-Goodman asked if any of them had been personally involved in a serious car accident and and one-third said they had, court documents say. When asked if anyone close to them had been involved in a serious car accident, again approximately one-third responded they had.
Holm’s attorney wanted to individually question all prospective jurors who had answered yes to either question, but the judge limited that questioning to those who said the experience might affect their ability to be fair and impartial. Four indicated they might feel bias, according to court documents.
None of the four ended up on the jury, but a majority of the jurors selected had been involved or knew someone who had been involved in a serious accident, the court documents say. Because those jurors had not disclosed potential bias for one side or the other, none was questioned individually on that subject, the documents say.
