Crossroads: Long sentence raises questions about justice

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The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY)

April 20, 2003 Sunday kentucky Ky EditionCorrection Appended

Crossroads; Long sentence raises question: Was justiceserved?

BYLINE: LINDENBERGER MICHAEL HIGHLAND DEBORAH

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A

LENGTH: 5211 words

Byline: MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER; DEBORAH HIGHLAND

Source: The Courier-Journal

Dateline: HOPKINSVILLE, Ky.

On Jan. 15, 2002, Demond Brown ran a red light at a Hopkinsville intersection.His Crown Victoria struck a Geo Metro carrying a mother and her daughter,killing both. He wasn't drunk and he wasn't on drugs. He admitted responsibilityand showed remorse. He knew he would be punished. What he didn't know is that hewould be convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to 20years in prison.

Sitting in the witness box at his murder trial, 20-year-old Demond Brown wantedto make it clear to the jury that he didn't deliberately run the traffic lightwhen his car hit and killed Debra and Megan Conklin.

Instead, Brown - a shy man with a history of low-paying jobs and learningdisabilities - made three damning admissions to Christian County Commonwealth'sAttorney Rick Boling.

Yes, he knew the traffic light was red just before his 1994 Ford Crown Victoriasailed through the intersection in January 2002 and broadsided the Conklins' GeoMetro.

Yes, he knew running a red light could cause an accident.

Yes, he knew car accidents could be deadly.

"I should have stopped," Brown said. "I wished I'd stopped."

Under questioning by his attorney, Brown had testified during his trial inJanuary of this year that he hadn't intentionally run the red light. But hisadmissions to Boling were enough for jurors to take the groundbreaking step inKentucky of convicting Brown of two counts of first-degree murder in an accidentthat involved neither drugs nor alcohol.

"He thought he was doing the right thing by being honest," said jury forewomanKelley Hufford of Brown's admission that he saw the red light but didn't applyhis brakes. "But it's because of his honesty the prosecutor was able to chargehim with murder.

"It was a Catch-22."

What jurors didn't understand was that Brown thought all the lights in all fourdirections at the crossroads were red, and he believed that by the time hereached the intersection his light would be green.

Without being told, jurors reached another understanding. Although they heard notestimony that would indicate Brown had been racing that night, several jurorssaid later they believed he was and that played a part in their decision toconvict him.

On March 19, Christian Circuit Judge John Atkins sentenced Brown, now 21, to two20-year prison sentences, to be served concurrently. That will keep him behindbars for 17 years before he will be eligible for parole.

In contrast, Larry Mahoney, who killed 27 people in an alcohol-related bus crashnear Carrollton in 1988, served nine years in prison.

Mahoney, whose blood-alcohol content had been nearly 2 1/2 times the legallimit, was driving his pickup truck the wrong way on Interstate 71 when hestruck a bus returning from a trip to King's Island. He was sentenced to 16years in prison but was let out after nine years for good behavior.

The verdict against Brown, a black man, by an all-white jury - and the longsentence - has stirred racial passions throughout Hopkinsville, which has thestate's third-largest African-American population behind Louisville andLexington. Six hundred of the city's 30,089 residents, white and black, turnedout at a prayer service the Sunday after the January verdict.

"When I first heard about this, I said to myself, 'Murder? Hell, this isn'tmurder. It's crazy,' " said the Rev. John Banks, president of theHopkinsville-Christian County NAACP and a Baptist minister.

But family and friends of the Conklins say the lengthy sentence can never equalthe pain they have experienced since the wreck. "It completely turned my lifeupside down to lose my mother and my sister," said Melissa Figge, DebraConklin's daughter and Megan's half sister.

"It's been the toughest year of my entire life."

THE ACCIDENT

Trip home turns tragic

On the night of Jan. 15, 2002, Megan Conklin was a month shy of her 16thbirthday, and her mind was focused on getting her driver's license.

The sophomore at Heritage Christian Academy didn't know it, but she was gettingthe keys to a restored classic car her father, Gerard, had kept since she was achild.

Having just finished cheering for her school's high school basketball team,

Crossroads; Long sentence raises question: Was justice served? TheCourier-Journal (Louisville, KY) April 20, 2003 Sunday kentucky Ky

EditionCorrection Appended

Megan got into her mother's car for the 20-minute ride home.

Megan was close to her mother, who grew up in eastern Jefferson County. Theywere active in the school's evening Bible study and recently had returned from atrip to Israel, where they had retraced the steps of Jesus in Galilee.

Teresa Burks, Megan's homeroom teacher, said Megan had been more than usuallyconcerned with her faith since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Thedestruction of the World Trade Center had reminded her that "no one knows whentheir time is coming," Burks said.

Demond Brown was also religious, a regular at Cedar Grove Baptist Church. Thosewho know him say Brown, 6 feet tall and 170 pounds with tight braids and adiamond stud earring, was shy and avoided confrontation.

At the time of the accident, he was a temporary worker at the Arvin Meritorplant, earning $8 an hour to check suspension bars used on automobiles.

Three weeks earlier, tired of being sleepy all the time, Brown had quit a secondfull-time job at Western State Hospital and switched to the day shift atMeritor.

On the afternoon of the accident, Brown ended his shift, jumped into his CrownVictoria and steered toward home. Home was a house built for his family threeyears earlier by Habitat for Humanity. He shared it with his mother, PriscillaLewis, and his younger brother, Tim Brown.

When he got home that afternoon, Brown stretched out for a nap. He woke about ahalf-hour before he had to leave to pick up his new girlfriend, Latisha Leavell,who also worked at Meritor. He watched some television and then he and hisbrother, Tim, headed out about 9:30 p.m.

When Leavell came out of the plant, she told Brown she was too tired to take herusual place at the wheel and reclined in the front passenger seat instead.

Brown pulled out of the Meritor lot and made a left onto Pembroke Road. Behindhim was Mike Kaylor, a fellow employee who was described by the prosecution anddefense as having a love for fast cars.

Brown accelerated on Pembroke and passed a Monte Carlo driven by Wayne A. Thomasof Christian County. Thomas would later testify that first Brown, then Kaylor,passed him at high speeds - and drove toward the intersection with the MartinLuther King Jr. Bypass a little more than a half-mile down the road.

Police were never able to say how fast Brown was going; on the stand Brown saidhe may have been driving about 60 mph in the 55 mph zone.

Kaylor, also having passed the Monte Carlo, was behind Brown as they came withinabout 400 feet of the intersection. Needing to make a right turn, he moved intothe far right turning lane and began to slow down.

Brown said later that he was momentarily distracted by Kaylor's headlights butclearly saw the red light ahead.

"I put my foot off of the gas pedal and was about to hit the brake because Iseen my light was red," he said in an interview from jail before being released



on bond pending appeal. "But I glanced over there and seen their light go yellowto red. In my mind, since the light was yellow to red, I thought mine was goingto turn green."

THE SCENE

'Get my baby!' woman cries

The first thing Brown felt was his car's airbag thumping against his face.

He remembered thinking he'd hit a deer.

The impact threw Leavell, who had reclined her seat, under the dash board -which likely saved her life. Tim Brown, in the back, slammed into his brother'sseat. None of the three was wearing a seat belt. Leavell's spleen was ruptured,and Tim Brown suffered minor injuries.

Debra and Megan Conklin took the full brunt of the collision with the biggerCrown Victoria. Their tiny Geo Metro - hit on the passenger's side - wentairborne, with the crumpled wreck coming down about 40 feet away.

Brown said he stumbled out of his car and, dazed, watched as witnesses used cellphones to call for help. As rescue workers arrived, witnesses would later say,they heard Debra Conklin calling out, "Get my baby! Get my baby out!"

Using the Jaws of Life, rescuers removed the Conklins from the car. DebraConklin was taken to the local Jennie Stuart Medical Center. Megan was flown byhelicopter to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn.

Debra Conklin died at 11:20 p.m. of multiple injuries to her head and chest. Herdaughter, Megan, died two hours later of internal injuries.

THE PROSECUTION

Charges unprecedented

Boling has a reputation as a toughas-nails prosecutor. He's a man who expectspeople to follow the law.

After weighing the facts, Boling made Kentucky history about 60 days after theaccident by charging Brown with two counts of first-degree murder. Brown alsowas charged with two counts of wanton endangerment related to the injuriessuffered by his brother and girlfriend.

In Kentucky, a person can be guilty of murder in two ways, according to thestate penal code. If someone intends to kill another person and then does it,that's murder, so long as the act was not committed "under extreme emotionaldistress."

But the law also says murder can occur when "including but not limited to theoperation of a motor vehicle under circumstances manifesting extremeindifference to human life."

Boling said he pursued murder charges against Brown because others in thecommunity said they frequently saw him driving fast when he left work andbecause he had plenty of time to slow down or stop after seeing his light wasred, but chose not to.



"When you have that much of a total disregard for human life, at that pointyou've gotten to criminal conduct," Boling said.

Previously, Boling pursued lesser charges of negligent homicide against a whiteman who had killed a youth in a car after running a red light in September 2000.

Boling said race had nothing to do with the difference in the charges. Thatdriver, Christopher Long, had thought the light was green, Boling said. Brown,he said, knew the light was red. Long has pleaded innocent, and his case ispending.

Local and national legal experts said that Brown's charge and conviction for afatal crash that does not involve alcohol or drugs is rare.

In 2001, for instance, Jon Paul Lazartes became just the second sober driver inNew York to be convicted of murder (second degree) after a wreck the year beforein which two passengers in another car died. Lazartes had been driving hisMercedes in excess of 100 mph while in a cat-and-mouse game with another driver,police said.

Lazartes was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.

In 1998, a driver was convicted of murder in New York after racing the wrong wayon a busy street to skirt stalled traffic. He crashed into another car, killinga 91-year-old woman and injuring two others.

Boling acknowledged the unprecedented nature of the charge in Kentucky but saidthe facts supported it. What Brown did, Boling said, was worse than causing afatal wreck while drunk. "When you are drunk, your judgment is impaired. He hada clear mind and still chose to do what he did."

Brown won't be eligible for early release other than parole because the lawmandates that murderers and some other violent offenders must serve at least 85percent of their sentences.

Boling, who has been the commonwealth's attorney since January 2000, said thatdespite the criticism he's gotten about how he prosecuted the Brown case, hebelieves his chances for re-election in three years have been bolstered. Hepredicted that voters will, in time, see that he stuck to his duty, even underintense pressure.

"The people elected me to do one thing: prosecute people. And that's what Idid," he said.

Not everyone in the community agrees with Boling's assessment.

Walter Shamble, second vice president of the local chapter of the NAACP and theunofficial spokesman for the Brown family, said, "This thing has drawn so muchattention I don't think Rick Boling would stand a chance at getting re-electedlocally."

THE TRIAL

Witness made a deal

Brown's trial began Jan. 21 and ended two days later.



In the courtroom that morning, the first thing Brown noticed was the allwhitejury.

The lone African-American potential juror had been removed from the pool byJudge Atkins during jury selection after the man said he didn't think he couldbe objective in the case, in part because his daughter was Megan's age.

The original jury pool, Boling said, included more than one African American,but as with all jury pools, some people had been excused earlier or did not showup for the selection process.

Sitting next to Brown was attorney Jim Carter, an experienced local lawyer whohad represented defendants in at least 15 other murder cases. Brown's family -primarily his grandmother, who retired after more than 30 years as a hospitalhousekeeper - pooled its money to pay for a good defense. Neither Brown's familynor his attorney would say how much the defense cost.

That first day, the prosecution called Mike Kaylor to testify. Kaylor had beencharged with one count of first-degree wanton endangerment for contributing toan atmosphere that had the potential to lead to an accident - a charge Bolingand Kaylor's attorney, Sands Chewning, said would have been hard to sustain hadKaylor gone to trial.

Chewning said the prosecution offered his client a no-risk option, to plead nocontest to the charge, receive no jail time and have his record wiped clean bystaying out of trouble for five years.

On the morning Brown's trial began, Kaylor entered an Alford plea, notacknowledging guilt but admitting there was enough evidence to convict him.

"When you have a jury of 12 people and two victims, you never know what willhappen," Chewning said. "My client has a family and a good job, and he didn'twant to take any risks."

Kaylor admitted on the stand that, trailing Brown, he had seen the accident,gone home, changed his clothes and returned with his wife in another vehicle.

"I was worried about leaving the scene as a witness. I thought I was going toget in trouble for that, so I panicked," Kaylor told the jury.

But Kaylor maintained his innocence. "As far as I was concerned I didn't doanything wrong," Kaylor said on the stand. "But it got started somehow that Iwas racing when in fact I wasn't. I really don't know where it came from."

He told the jury that he and Brown never drove side-by-side and never saw eachother.

Several jurors would later say they convicted Brown in part because they feltKaylor and Brown must have been racing.

Why else would Kaylor - who was not part of the accident - have been chargedwith a crime, some jurors later speculated in interviews for this story.

Kaylor also told the jury that he saw Brown apply his brakes briefly before thecollision. "I know I saw brake lights," Kaylor said.

Under questioning by Carter, Brown told the jury he thought the light was



changing and never saw the Conklins' Metro.

"I wanted to say I was sorry when the accident happened," Brown said on thestand. "It's hard on y'all and hard on me. . . . I just can't believe I took twopeoples lives."

Carter would say after the trial that he had tried to help Brown make thedistinction that he had not meant to run the light. He conceded neither he norBrown had been able to articulate that clearly to the jury.

A police officer testified earlier in the trial that Brown had told him at thescene of the accident that he had been trying to time the light - and that Brownhad said he thought the light was changing.

In his closing argument, Carter told jurors the wreck had been an accident, but- in a development he blamed on a lack of time - he did not offer a rationalefor how Brown might have thought the light was going to turn before he reachedit.

He told the jury that even if they did not believe that his client thought thelight would change, they did not have enough evidence to find Brown guilty of acrime.

"Even if he did run the red light intentionally," he said, "you must find thathis actions were a gross deviation from the standard of care a normal personwould have shown."

Running a red light, no matter how purposefully, does not meet that standard, heargued.

"People run red lights. It happens. Just a few weeks ago at Ninth and Virginia,I saw a police officer - a police officer - run through a red light. I bet anumber of you have run a red light. I have done it. But does running a red lightmake a felony crime?"

Carter said the fact that the jury was not persuaded that Brown had not intendedto run the light played a major role in its decision.

"That's it! The key point of the whole case," Carter said. ". . . It might verywell have made all the difference in the world."

THE VERDICT

Brown's testimony was key

From inside the jury box, there was sympathy for Brown but wholesale agreementwith the prosecutor's arguments, according to six jurors who were interviewedafter the trial.

"I saw the prosecutor's main point," juror Mark Burroughs, 39, said. ". . . Thatto know to enter the intersection on a red light was what Brown's crime was. Andto know that it could cause harm and possible death and all that. That's whatcaused him to be guilty."

Burroughs said hearing Brown admit he knew those things on the stand cinched itfor him. "If he hadn't have been on the stand, it would have left us to figureit out."



Carter said it was Brown's decision whether he wanted to take the stand. Brownwanted to apologize because thoughts of the victims haunted him, Carter said.

Hufford, 35, the jury forewoman, said she thought Carter had miscalculated byfiguring that if his client told the truth, expressed remorse and tookresponsibility for the crime, the jury would not convict him of murder.

Brown "did exactly what he was supposed to," said Hufford, whose husband isblack. "He sat up there and told the truth. We knew he was remorseful.

"But we couldn't go by our heart. We had to go by the law and what the judge'sinstructions were. Yes, we knew that by convicting him of firstdegree murder wewere being severe, but we also knew we had to follow the law."

Jurors also said a factor in Brown's conviction was a lack of a spirited defenseby Carter.

"When you sit there and admit you are guilty, why do you even need a trial?"said juror Ken Wells, a 61-yearold quality-assurance engineer for Plymouth tubefactory. Carter "never really, in my opinion, . . . presented a case," he said.

Juror Kathy Cannon, 45, said the murder verdict was relatively easy to come to,even as it broke some of the jurors' hearts to impose it. Jurors, she said, keptreturning to those five words: "extreme indifference to human life."

"There was no way around it," Cannon said. "What made it hard even to get itlowered was the fact that the kid, the kid himself, admitted on the stand toseeing the red light three or four different times as he was coming up to it andcontinued to run it."

But there was an additional factor in at least some jurors' minds that led toBrown's conviction, some said after the trial.

Juror Roberta Dorsey, 64, said hearing Kaylor say he wasn't racing put the ideain her mind that Brown and Kaylor indeed must have been racing. That belief, shesaid, made it easier to convict Brown of so serious an offense.

If Kaylor had been telling the truth about the racing, Dorsey asked, why wouldhe have pleaded no contest to the charges?

"You just have to use your common sense," Dorsey said. "When this kid on thestand says he was on the right and then says he takes off and tries to hidehimself, well he would have to feel guilty, have to feel guilty for something."

Wells said he also felt that Kaylor's presence on the stand made him think thathe had been involved in more than he was admitting to.

"He said, 'People say we were racing but we weren't.' But that actuallyhappened. I think they did that."

Kaylor was not charged with racing, nor did he admit guilt in connection withBrown's accident.

Juror Burroughs, an employee at the General Electric plant in Madisonville,said: "They never came out and said they were racing, but they didn't say hewasn't. And as the days progressed, there were jurors who said there was talkthat those two had raced before."



That talk, Carter said, had been spread throughout the community in the weeksafter the accident. If jurors based their decisions, even in part, on what theyhad heard or read outside of the trial, their verdict could be tainted, Cartersaid.

Burroughs said he doesn't know from what sources other jurors based theirjudgments that Kaylor and Brown were racing, but Burroughs said it was clear tohim that it was not just from what had been said at the trial.

"Where they got it from, I have no idea," Burroughs said.

Boling acknowledged that those rumors circulated in the community and thatdetectives interviewed Meritor employees in an unsuccessful attempt to seekevidence of racing.

He said he wasn't concerned that jurors might have heard those rumors.

"What was important was their ability to strip out what was important about eachpiece of evidence," Boling said. "And this jury was as good as any in thatregard."

THE SENTENCE

Jurors shocked by penalty

If the verdict was easily reached, a sentence recommendation was not.

When the jurors walked out of their sentencing deliberations, almost all were intears, some later said.

Several jurors, including Wells, Hufford and Burroughs, said they had expectedto be able to impose a lighter sentence on Brown after the murder convictions.

"I think we were kind of shocked, seriously," Wells said. "I was thinking he'dget two, three, five years and then probation."

Jurors are not made aware of potential punishments, at least 20 years in prisonfor the murder convictions, until after they have completed the guilt phase of atrial.

Hufford said the realization that Brown would be locked up for at least 17 ofthose 20 years before being eligible for parole was emotionally devastating toher and others on the jury.

Had they known how severe the penalty would be, some said they might havereconsidered their original verdict.

"It probably should have been manslaughter, you know," Wells said. "But when youdon't know the sentence, and with the way it was laid out for us, we found himguilty on the guidelines we had."

The judge instructed the jurors that they needed to start with the most severecharge, murder. If they could not agree that the case met all the requirements,then they should move on to the next charge. The jury had eight choices - twocounts of murder, two counts of manslaughter in the second degree, two counts ofreckless homicide and two counts of wanton endangerment.



Because of the length of his sentence, Brown's case automatically will beappealed to the state Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Brown has been released fromjail on a $20,000 property bond.

A Hopkinsville couple, Marshall and Betty Gray, put up the equity they had intheir home to secure Brown's release.

Carter, whose involvement with Brown ended after he filed a notice of appeal onMarch 21 on behalf of his former client, said the case will stay with him fortwo reasons.

"One is that Brown has the kind of good record and overall life circumstancesthat I don't get to see in my position very often. . . . He's just a good kid.

"The other reason is that there is, you like to believe, a balance to the law,"Carter said. "But there is no balance here. Justice is way out of balance."

THE REACTION

Sentence draws protest

On March 19, the day of Brown's sentencing, court officers were greeted bybanners being waved in support of Brown.

"It interests me that a black man has an accident and somebody gets killed andhe is charged with murder," Isaac Richmond, national director of the Commissionon Religion and Racism, a civil-rights organization based in Memphis, Tenn.,said the day of Brown's sentencing.

"We think something is going on real wrong."

His group has asked the U.S. Justice Department's civil-rights division toinvestigate Boling's office.

Boling said he welcomes an investigation and said he stands by his decision tocharge Brown with murder. Outside protesters who stir up racial discord do adisservice to Hopkinsville, Boling said.

Located on the Kentucky-Tennessee border about 10 miles from the Fort CampbellArmy post and the enormous concrete monument to Jefferson Davis, the presidentof the Confederacy, Hopkinsville is home to 30,089 residents.

Mayor Richard Liebe said as in most cities with diverse populations racerelations in Hopkinsville, where onethird of the population is African American,aren't perfect.

"But in moments of crisis, Hopkinsville really comes together and shows a senseof community," he said.

Liebe said that nearly all the publicly expressed opinions about Brown's casehave questioned the verdict and the jury makeup. Black residents were almostunanimous in their concern, he said.

At Farrell's Hamburgers - a tiny but bustling downtown fixture since 1936, wherefat and tasty burgers are $1.11 - talk of the verdict has been common since thetrial.



"He needs a new trial," Shatonya Wilson said from behind the counter. "Nooffense to y'all - I love everybody," she said, referring to white customers inthe restaurant, "but in the commonwealth, a black man don't stand a chance.That's the God's honest truth."

Farther down the counter, employee Deborah Swanagan, 46, and also black, agreed."And it's not just the little people who come in here who think so," she said."A lot of the big white people in town who come in feel the same way."

Liebe said many white residents have also spoken out.

"I think it is sick," said Kim Doss, a designer at a Main Street florist shop."In Hopkinsville? It's absolutely stupid for them to have had an all-white jury.I wouldn't want an all-white jury, and I am white.

"America is just not like that anymore."

The Rev. Lee Huckleberry, a white minister from Hopkinsville's First ChristianChurch Disciples of Christ, said the murder charges would not have been filed ifBrown were white or the Conklins black.

"The punishment in no way fits the crime," Huckleberry said.

Austin Moss, a black executive with the local Jennie Stuart Medical Center, saidthe trial has increased racial awareness in Hopkinsville like no other event inrecent years.

Besides the rally, he said, talk throughout the city has focused on how whitesand blacks get along.

"The Demond Brown case has been sort of a spark that triggered a higherconsciousness of race relations here," Moss said.

THE AFTERMATH

Support lifts Brown

Brown now spends his days looking for work.

Since he was released from jail, he's spent one day at a factory, a job he gotthrough Quality Personnel, the agency that had earlier placed him at the Meritorplant.

But despite filling out about a dozen job applications, he's had no takers.After the one interview he landed, the company sent him a letter saying thatwhat it learned in a background check prevented it from hiring him.

Work always has been a big part of his life.

While in high school, Brown worked in the dietary department of Western StateHospital. He delivered food trays to patients and picked them up when they weredone with their meals.

After high school, he took a second job, the night shift at Meritor. He workedboth jobs until a month before the accident.

"He worked from sunup to sundown," said his mother, Priscilla Lewis. "He do know



how to work. He gives me money. He gives his grandma money. He's a sweet,loving, kind, gentle guy."

The prospect of his living the next 20 years in prison is almost as baffling toBrown as is the concept of himself as a killer. But he said he's not scaredanymore.

"I just keep praying," Brown said. "That's about the only thing I can do."

Brown said he thinks about the Conklins every day. He regrets the accident andtheir deaths. He also feels that he has disappointed his family.

His spirits have been buoyed by the support he's received in the community, hesaid. Fund-raisers have been held and many churches in the area have contributedto his legal defense fund, Shamble said.

No one has said anything negative to Brown. "They just (keep) telling me theyhate to see me have to go through this stuff, he said. "And just keep on doingwhat I was doing before this happened."

"It feels good, everybody supporting me. I'm just blessed."

THE APPEAL

Winning new trial difficult

Appealing Brown's conviction to the Kentucky Supreme Court won't be easy, legalexperts say.

University of Louisville law school Professor Les Abramson said that given theunusual nature of the charge, Brown's attorneys, when they are hired, couldargue that he was a victim of selective prosecution, but that is hard to prove.

If others in similar cases were not similarly charged, and Brown could show thathe'd been singled out for so-called "constitutionally prohibited" reasons - suchas race, gender or religion - "he might have a good claim," Abramson said.

Some members of the community have insisted that Brown's conviction by anall-white jury ought to be grounds for appeal, but Abramson and other legalexperts said that would only be grounds for an appeal if Carter had raised theissue during the trial and if he could argue that prosecutors had removed blackpotential jurors because of their race.

Carter said he was aware of no legal basis to ask the judge to expand the jurypool because it was almost all white. "There is no law that says a jury has tobe made up of your peers, when it comes to your age or race," Carter said.

But in at least one other nearby case, in Murray, a judge delayed jury selectionin a trial in order to boost numbers of African Americans in the jury pool, saidTom Glover, chief public defender for Western Kentucky.

Banks, the NAACP chapter president, said he faulted Judge Atkins for notinsisting that the jury was diverse, especially in Hopkinsville.

"He should have known that that isn't fair, that something wasn't right, whenthe jury was all white," Banks said.



Abramson and others said that any appeal of Brown's case will have to argue thaterrors were made during the trial or that he was represented by incompetentcounsel.

Boling said he was confident the verdict will be upheld. "This was basically anerror-free trial."

The Conklins' friends and family members already feel justice has been served.

"By the end of the trial, all the animosity and anger went out of me," CatherineWyatt, Megan's grandmother, said recently. "But I don't think he got an unfairsentence for both of them being dead.

"Nobody wins, you know?

"But even so, his mother can go and see him and can hold him and touch him,"said Wyatt, of Harrod's Creek. "I have to go to the cemetery and look down tosee them ever again."

Reach the reporters at [email protected] [email protected].

LOAD-DATE: August 23, 2003

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION: published Aug. 15, 2003 p.A2 Because of a reporter's error, a storyApril 20 incorrectly said that a Christian County jury was the first in Kentuckyto convict someone who was not drinking, using drugs or speeding of murder forcausing a fatal accident. In 1991, a coal truck driver ran a light and killed anoncoming driver. His murder conviction was overturned by the state SupremeCourt.

GRAPHIC: DemondBrownMeganConklinDebraConklin; BY BILL LUSTER, THECOURIER-JOURNALA makeshift memorial marked the intersection of Pembroke Road andthe Martin Luther King Jr. Bypass, where Debra and Megan Conklin suffered fatalinjuries in a January 2002 car accident. The other car's driver, Demond Brown,said he thought his light was about to turn green. BY BILL LUSTER, THECOURIER-JOURNALDemond Brown said that he saw red lights in all four directionsof this intersection near Hopkinsville and thought that his light was about toturn green. His Ford Crown Victoria rammed into the side of a Geo Metro. BY BILLLUSTER, THE COURIER-JOURNALProsecutor Rick Boling said murder charges werewarranted because of "a total disregard for human life." BY SAM UPSHAW JR., THECOURIER-JOURNALJudge John Atkins sentenced Brown to the minimum penalty of twoconcurrent 20-year prison sentences, which the jury had recommended.COURIER-JOURNAL PHOTOS AT LEFT BY SAM UPSHAW JR.; AT RIGHT BY BULLLUSTERAttorney Jim Carter, right, represented Brown, pictured in a post-trialhearing at left. "He's just a good kid," Carter said. "Justice is way out ofbalance." BY BILL LUSTER, THE COURIER-JOURNAL"I think it is sick," said KimDoss, a designer at a Main Street florist shop. "In Hopkinsville? It'sabsolutely stupid for them to have had an all-white jury."Map that shows thelocation of the site of accident (SEE LIBRARY MICROFILM OR LIBRARY KIOSK PDFPAGES)

Copyright 2003 The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY)



Crossroads: Long sentence raises questions about justice

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