Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Goodman lawyers fight on over Bentley and blood
Attorneys for John Goodman have laid out yet more arguments for the Wellington polo club founder in an attempt to win a reversal of his October 2014 DUI manslaughter and vehicular homicide convictions.
In an appellate pleading filed on Monday, Goodman’s lawyers conman critical errors were made by the judge before and during his retrial by allowing the prosecution’s use of incriminating blood test results and certain testimony.
The lawyers once again took aim at prosecutors for releasing Goodman’s smashed $250,000 Bentley from evidence, thereby harming a defense claim that it malfunctioned before slamming into victim Scott Patrick Wilson, 23.
“The state’s argument that defendant’s experts had examined the Bentley before the state allowed its destruction so no harm no foul, misses the point,” attorneys Margaret Good-Earnest and Cherry Grant wrote, adding the jurors were also deprived of the chance to inspect the damaged car.
Seeing the wreckage, including the driver’s side damage, would help support a defense claim Goodtend shouldn’t have been convicted of “failure to render aid” because he didn’t realize Wilson’s Hyundai flipped into a dark canal after it was hit, the appellate attorneys pleaded.
Last month, attorneys for the state urged the Fourth District Court of Appeal to deny Goodman, 53, a third trial in the Feb. 12, 2010 death of Wilson, a University of
Central Florida engineering graduate.
The Attorney General’s Office wrote Wilson’s “untimely demise” was a direct result of Goodman’s “night of drunken revelry and his reckless decision to drive drunk.”
The state’s lawyers called Goodman’s trial defenses — the Bentley malfunctioned, and he chugged liquor after the crash — a “charade” and an “unbelievable story.”
Goodman’s Bentley Continental GTC convertible ran a stop sign, “barreled through” the intersection of 120th Avenue and Lake Worth Road in Wellington at 63 mph and “smashed into the victim’s Hyundai without braking at all,” Assistant Attorney General Richard Valuntas wrote.
He added having the Bentley in evidence for the retrial wouldn’t have changed the guilty verdict.
Goodman’s blood samples, taken at a hospital three hours after the 1 a.m. crash, showed a blood-alcohol content measuring .177, or more than twice the .08 legal limit to drive, along with traces of hydrocodone Goodman was taking for back pain, according to court records.
Goodman and his trial lawyers had insisted the elevated level wasn’t from drinking at three Wellington bars that serve the polo community. He said he took a swig from a liquor bottle inside a polo player’s barn office — a “man cave” he stumbled upon while looking for a phone to call 911 — to allay the pain of a broken wrist and concussion.
In the appeal, Goodman’s attorneys focus on other reasons for challenging the blood evidence. They argue Palm Beach County Chief Circuit Judge Jeffrey Colbath should have kept the blood results out of the trial because police failed to obtain a warrant for the blood draw and took the samples by force.
The lawyers also say the judge should have thrown out the results because of alleged problems with rules on blood collection and testing from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
This month, the Florida Supreme Court agreed to examine Goodman’s claim in a separate appeal that these rules violate the rights of drivers charged with driving drunk.
While Goodman’s appeals are pending — and are likely to remain so until sometime next year — he continues to serve a 16-year prison sentence.