Knoxville panel of judges will decide if Janet Hinds is granted second trial
The attorney for a woman convicted of the 2019 hit-and-run death of a Chattanooga police officer has asked a Knoxville panel of judges to grant her client a new trial, saying her blood alcohol level was incorrectly measured.
Chattanooga attorney Marya L. Schalk is leading the second attempt to get her client, Janet Hinds, a new trial. Hinds was sentenced to 11 years in prison after being found guilty of vehicular homicide by intoxication in the death of 38-year-old Chattanooga police officer Nicholas Galinger.
Schalk told the threejudge appellate panel on Wednesday that her client’s estimated blood alcohol level was calculated incorrectly since it was calculated for an average size woman and not for Hinds.
“The state did nothing to prove that Ms. Hinds was average,” Schalk said in a video of the hearing. “Her weight, obviously, was not average, since she’s 20 pounds heavier.”
Prosecutor Edwin Alan Groves said that even if the weight was changed, Hinds’ blood alcohol level was still over the legal limit.
During Hinds’ six-day trial, Mike Lytle, assistant director of the forensic services division of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, used a method called retrograde extrapolation to estimate Hinds’ alcohol content at the time of the accident, saying it was between .14% and .18%.
The legal blood alcohol limit in Georgia and Tennessee is .08%
Schalk would not provide further comment on the appeal but said “we will be patiently awaiting the court’s decision” in a Thursday email to the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
It could take months before the panel releases a written decision.
In April of last year, Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Don W. Poole denied the first motion for a retrial.
Hinds, who had been out with friends earlier the evening of Feb. 23, 2019, according to video footage from a North Georgia restaurant presented during her 2021 trial, turned herself in to authorities two days after the vehicle she was driving hit Galinger shortly after 11 p.m., as he was inspecting a manhole on the 2900 block of Hamill Road.
Video footage between 7-10:30 p.m. from the Farm to Fork restaurant presented at the trial showed Hinds drinking around 76 ounces of beer and a lemon drop vodka shot before driving herself home.
During Hind’s trial, the prosecution said the impact was so severe that Galinger was thrown 160 feet in the air, and testimony from Chattanooga police officer Joe Warren, the lead investigator in the case and a crash reconstruction expert, said he usually sees those types of injuries in pedestrians hit on an interstate where speeds are higher.
After Hinds’ conviction, a law was passed mandating drivers convicted of vehicular homicide by intoxication pay child support to the victim’s surviving children. The law was partially named after Gallinger’s children.