TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Mistrial Declared In Hit-Run

ADVERTISEMENT

By TODD LESKANIC

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 20, 2008

NEW PORT RICHEY - Three days of complex testimony and more than three hours of deliberation brought no outcome to the DUI-manslaughter trial of Shannon Stephen, accused of killing two people walking home from the Chasco Fiesta two years ago.

Circuit Judge Jack Day declared a mistrial at 10:45 p.m. Wednesday after the jury foreman informed him the six-member panel was hopelessly deadlocked.

Verdicts in criminal cases must be unanimous.
Assistant State Attorney Eric Rosario asked Day to reschedule the case for trial within 60 days. The judge scheduled a status conference for July 1.

No witness who testified this week could put Stephen behind the wheel of his Chevy Silverado when it mowed down two pedestrians on March 26, 2006.

Evidently, jurors couldn't agree on that issue either.

Stephen, 36, of Holiday, faced as much as 45 years in prison had he been convicted as charged of two counts of DUI-manslaughter and one count of leaving the scene of an accident involving death. Prosecutors can retry him on those charges.

According to testimony, Stephen was drinking heavily with friends at Seven's Bar & Grill on Little Road the night Joseph Swiech and Sarah Gleason were run over on Grand Boulevard. Swiech, 26, and Gleason, 24, who were engaged, were walking back from the Chasco Fiesta when they were hit about 1 a.m.

Two of Stephen's drinking buddies from that night testified they tried to stop him from driving but said he broke away from them and drove off alone in his truck. His blood-alcohol level was 0.24, three times the level at which Florida law presumes a driver to be impaired.

Rick Scott and Jim Ramsey, who were en route to pick up the couple and another friend, Robert Bartlett, said they found a man alone in his damaged Silverado about a mile from the crash site. In court, Ramsey said Stephen was the man he had seen, and Scott said Stephen fit the man's body type.

The defense offered a different theory, saying one of Stephen's drinking buddies was behind the wheel of the Silverado when it plowed into the couple, then took off and left an inebriated Stephen to deal with the consequences by himself.

During testimony Wednesday, defense witness Walter Schubart Jr. testified that he saw Stephen and two men outside Seven's that night. He said Stephen fell and then was helped by his two friends to the passenger side of a truck. Schubart said the men put Stephen in the passenger seat, then went around to the driver's side, got in and drove away.

In weighing such significantly different versions of events, Rosario urged jurors to use common sense.

"I'm not asking you to speculate, to leap to conclusions," he said. "I'm asking you to use your brains and use logic. What makes sense and what requires you to wildly speculate and to guess?"

After three long days of testimony and argument, though, and without an eyewitness who could definitively say who was driving the Silverado, jurors couldn't decide.

Reporter Todd Leskanic can be reached at (727) 815-1084 or tleskanic@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT