After four years, trial date still remains unsettled for ex-con charged with gross vehicular manslaughter
Judge orders Stephen D. Chiara, 51, to return to Department 11
A trial date has been set next month for a parolee charged with gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, the result of a March 2019 motorcycle crash in Fairfield that killed his female passenger.
Stephen Duane Chiara, 51, who appeared March 2 in Department 11, heard Judge William J. Pendergast reschedule a readiness conference and a trial-setting for 8:30 a.m. April 27 in the Justice Center in Fairfield. A parole revocation hearing for Chiara also will be held at the same time, court records show.
Chiara's latest court scheduling follows a Jan. 24, 2020, preliminary hearing, when Pendergast ruled there was enough evidence to hold him for further arraignment on three counts besides gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated: driving under the influence; DUI causing bodily injury; and driving without a license.
During the hearing, as previously reported, Chiara's attorney, Deputy Public Defender Pamela Boskin, referring to testimony from California Highway Patrol Officer
John Link, questioned whether her client showed negligence at the time of the March 27 crash.
She further argued that there was “nothing that correlated” — namely the alleged smell of alcohol coming from Chiara's clothing — to her client's blood-alcohol content, which was tested and found to be greater than the 0.08 legal limit, at 0.13.
Boskin also raised doubts about the two blood samples taken by a phlebotomist contracted with the Solano County District Attorney's Office, suggesting a mistake may have been made.
Additionally, she raised the possibility that another vehicle may have spooked Chiara at the time of the 8:45 p.m. crash, which occurred when he was driving his Harley-Davidson motorcycle east on Interstate 80 underneath the Green Valley Road overcrossing and crashed into a guard rail.
In response to Boskin's statements, then-Deputy District Attorney Susan A. Rados, who was leading the prosecution at the time, said the case “rests on whether there was another car involved” that contributed to the motorcycle crash in some way.
There was “no evidence that another vehicle” may have been involved, she said, challenging Boskin, and alluded to statements made by a witness, Andrew
Lind of Suisun
City, whom Link interviewed after the crash.
A California Highway Patrol report stated that
“for unknown reasons, the driver was unable to maintain control of the motorcycle and both the driver and the female passenger were ejected from the motorcycle.”
According to the DA's charging documents, Chiara was alleged to have been under the influence of both alcohol and an unspecified drug at the time.
Chiara and his passenger, Mary “Max” Hadley, were taken to NorthBay Medical Center in Fairfield with major injuries. She later died.
Hadley, identified as a resident of both Eureka and Fairfield, worked as a self-employed investigator in Humboldt County, according to her family.
Link testified that Chiara suffered a compound fracture in the crash and he interviewed him at the hospital, where, he said, he smelled alcohol on the defendant.
The officer said Chiara told him that he was “traveling at freeway speed and someone cut him off.” Link also noted that Chiara said Hadley was his fiancee — a statement some of her relatives dispute.
Link also told Rados that a trained CHP investigator, examining the motorcycle, determined that “there was nothing really (mechanically) wrong” with it that would lead to a crash.
Chiara was on parole at the time of the crash, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
In 1991, he was arrested in connection with the death of a Fortuna woman, Mary Kesser, after he was found hiding with a sawed-off shotgun in a closet at a residence close to her home, according to a Eureka TimesStandard report. Chiara reportedly was hired by Kesser's husband, who sought to kill her for insurance money.
Chiara was convicted in January 1993. He was paroled to the Bay Area in July 2018, according to the CDCR. He remains in the Stanton Correctional Facility in Fairfield on $180,000 bail.