Woman sentenced in NLR car crash
Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2008
A Cabot woman convicted of second-degree battery for crippling another woman in a North Little Rock car crash was sentenced Monday to four years on probation with a $ 500 fine.
Sentencing for Jane Elizabeth Stowell was delayed three weeks after jurors in her July trial recommended a sentence with provisions that Circuit Judge John Langston couldn’t impose. The judge delayed the sentencing for prosecutors, defense attorneys and his staff to study the law to determine how to sentence her.
The nine men and three women recommended that Stowell be sentenced to two or three years in a mental institution, serve at least four years on probation, pay as much as $ 3, 000 in fines and have her driver’s license permanently revoked.
Stowell’s attorney, Jack Lassiter, told the judge Monday that Langston should impose only the fines. Prosecutors didn’t offer a recommendation. Langston ordered Stowell to continue psychiatric treatment while she’s on probation and barred her from driving during the duration of her sentence.
“I’ve tried my best to carry out what the jury wanted,” Langston said.
The permanent drivers license suspension and mental commitment were beyond the jury’s authority as were recommendations of a joint fine and probation.
Jurors found Stowell guilty of second-degree battery for the injuries of 24-year-old Stephanie Ruiz, who was partially paralyzed in an August 2006 car crash on U. S. 67 / 167. According to trial testimony, Stowell told a state trooper she had drifted into Ruiz’s lane while trying to use her shoe to fetch her cell phone from the passenger-side floorboard. Stowell didn’t testify.
Jurors reduced a second second-degree battery charge, representing the injuries of a passenger in Ruiz’s pickup, to misdemeanor third-degree battery and rejected a misdemeanor driving while intoxicated charge. Prosecutors claimed Stowell, who was being treated for anxiety and bipolar disorder, was over-medicated at the time of the crash.
At the July trial, Stowell’s husband, Martin Leroy “Marty” Stowell, an Air Force contractor, testified that because she is disabled due to her mental health problems, his wife spends most of her days watching television. They have to have a full-time housekeeper who also has to monitor Jane Stowell for suicide attempts, he said. She’s required hospitalization three or four times since the crash, at least once for trying to kill herself, he told the judge.
Marty Stowell said his wife has no interest in driving and deliberately passed up an opportunity to have her license reinstated after her suspension from the crash expired.
“She didn’t intend to hurt anybody,” Marty Stowell said. “She didn’t want to drive again.” She’s been treated for psychiatric disorders for more than a decade, which includes 30 shock treatments, and has limited short-term memory, Marty Stowell testified.
According to trial testimony, Stowell crashed her blue Honda S 2000 convertible into Ruiz’s yellow Chevrolet S-10 pickup while driving faster than 55 mph.
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