LAWYERS IN CASE OF FATAL CRASH ARGUE DRUG IMPAIRMENT LEVELS

Defense Believes Law Specifying Drug Limits Is Unconstitutional

A courtroom turned into a chemistry class Monday as experts debated a state
law being used to prosecute the driver of a minivan that killed six
teen-agers in the Interstate 15 median.

Defense attorney John Watkins, who represents Jessica Williams, is asking
District Judge Mark Gibbons to find unconstitutional the law that prohibits
people from driving with certain amounts of specific drugs in their system.
The judge is expected to issue a written decision after hearing arguments
on the issue Wednesday.

Defense expert Dr. Bryan Finkle said he does not believe it is possible
that anyone on the planet would be impaired by the level of marijuana
listed in the statute.

"It is possible. It is possible I'm an alien," Finkle countered when
pressed by a prosecutor.

In defending the law, prosecutors say it is not necessary to show that a
person with a certain amount of marijuana in their system would experience
a certain amount of impairment.

Rather, they contend that legislators adopted a rational solution to a
serious problem when they passed the law in 1999.

State Sen. Jon Porter, R-Henderson, said a visit from grieving constituents
educated him on the difficulties of prosecuting drivers whose impairment is
due to consumption of drugs, not alcohol.

He testified that the family of William Faber was angry that this perceived
loophole had resulted in a lenient sentence for a driver involved in the
February 1997 accident in which Faber died.

"They sat in my office literally in tears," Porter said.

The senator, who is challenging Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., in the
general election, said numerous experts advised legislators on the best way
to achieve the stated goal of ridding the road of drugged drivers.

Legislators were told that, unlike with alcohol, it was not possible to set
a minimum marijuana level at which a driver is presumed to be impaired.

Dr. Raymond Kelly, an expert for the prosecution, said it is clear that
marijuana can affect such driving-related skills as coordination and the
ability to recognize and respond to hazards.

He cited one study in which a flight simulator was used to determine the
skills of experienced pilots who then each smoked a marijuana cigarette.

Four hours later, their flight skills were impaired and they clearly
understood this situation. After 24 hours, the pilots thought they were
back to normal.

"Yet they didn't perform normally on the various flying tasks, not all of
them at least," he said.

Kelly acknowledged, though, that one cannot determine impairment levels
simply by looking at the amount of marijuana in the bloodstream.

Prosecutors say legislators, faced with this scientific fact, could have
prohibited people from driving with any detectable amount of a prohibited
substance. Courts have upheld such statutes in several states, including
Georgia and Arizona.

The Nevada statute is triggered when at least 2 nanograms of marijuana is
found in a milliliter of a driver's blood. In the Williams case, three
tests found 5.5, 5.1 and 4.8 nanograms of marijuana per milliliter of her
blood.

Williams, 21, remains in the Clark County Detention Center on $5 million
bail. She is charged in a March 19 accident in which her minivan entered
the median of I-15 near the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, running into six
teens on a county work crew.

Killed were Anthony Smith, 14, Scott Garner Jr., 14, Alberto Puig, 16,
Maleyna Stoltzfus, 15, and Rebeccah Glicken, 15, and Jennifer Booth, 16.