During the trial last week, Damelio, conceded that Telban had been drinking. But he cited testimony by a defense expert that Volkmuth was traveling at 65 mph in a 40 mph zone and Telban’s view of the road as he left the country club was blocked by a mailbox.
“The manner of his (Telban) pulling out of the driveway did not significantly forge a link in the chain of causes which brought about the death of Mr. Volkmuth,” Connell said in a written decision.
“The excessive speed of the motorcycle in conjunction with the curvature of the road in the area that the cycle made multiple lane changes, prevented Mr. Volkmuth from stopping or avoiding the fatal collision with the defendant’s vehicle.
Without being in court and hearing the entire trial, I can’t really make a decision either way. The former deputy shouldn’t have been drunk, the biker shouldn’t have been doing 25 over the speed limit, in a 40 zone around a corner no less.
Look at it this way. Say the deputy was stone cold sober, and did the same thing. Is it vehicular manslaughter when the biker was that much over the speed limit? At 40, could he have stopped, avoided the crash, or simply lessened the crash to the point of it not being fatal?
Maybe it’s that I spent 2 years in a pre-law curriculum that I tend to look at cases like this from multiple angles.