Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 13, 1995 TAG: 9503130009
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
When Jim Conley Lane and Jeri Lane separated nearly 14 years ago, they made a pact to remain close for the sake of things more important than the differences that drove them apart.
There is the haircutting business in Roanoke County the two have operated for more than 20 years, for one thing.
Then there was their only child. They never wanted their son to have to choose between them.
But for the past two years, Jim and Jeri have also been bound by the search for answers about how their 21-year-old son, Conley, met his death in a two-car accident on an icy Rocky Mountain highway. They're finding it tough to get those answers from 2,000 miles away.
Police and attorneys have explained the accident, but the Lanes aren't satisfied by what they've been told. They say the story just doesn't add up.
And there is this irony: Police say the driver of the other car involved the crash was speeding and drunk. Both the investigating officer and a prosecutor wanted to charge him, but couldn't because of a quirk in Wyoming law. In addition, the collision was not his fault, drunk or not.
The Lanes also cite a letter from an attorney telling how the highway patrolman who investigated the accident was distressed by preferential treatment given to that other driver.
In December, the Lanes filed a wrongful-death suit in Jackson, Wyo., against the drivers of both vehicles. They hope the suit will help them find an end to their grief.
``This is not about money from the start,'' Jim Lane says. ``We're trying to get this thing into court, where I'm looking at someone and they say, `This is what happened.'''
Jim and Jeri Lane remember Conley as a mature young man in love with nature. When he was 18, he headed out West to experience as much nature as he could find.
Jim and Conley even bought a chunk of land in Montana. Jim says Conley, who planned to live on that land one day, made the drive up from Jackson all the time.
``It was like he found where he was supposed to be,'' Jim says.
Conley was his father's best friend, his partner for trips to Montana and Wyoming, where the two slept on riverbanks under the stars and fished every stream they could find.
Jeri Lane says they know their son was no angel. He had been in trouble with the law for being drunk in public once or twice, she says, but he was no problem drinker. They quit drinking themselves 14 years ago because they didn't want to model that kind of behavior for him.
That's one reason why they find the police explanation of the accident puzzling.
Here's what police say happened Dec. 11, 1992: Ollie Sutherland, 20, of Virginia Beach and Conley Lane were heading west on Wyoming Highway 22 about 11 p.m., with Sutherland driving. They rounded a curve, hit some ice and spun into the path of a pickup driven by David Yearsley of Jackson, Wyo. The cars collided almost head-on. Lane and Sutherland died at the scene. Yearsley and his three passengers were injured, one critically.
The police reconstruction of the accident determined that Sutherland was going between 61 and 69 mph in a 45 mph zone. The accident took place entirely in Yearsley's lane, which police say means that the collision was entirely Sutherland's fault.
Blood tests showed that Sutherland had a blood-alcohol content of 0.17 percent, and Lane's was 0.20 percent.
The Lanes' skepticism begins with Conley's blood-alcohol level.
Conley Lane's roommate, Tony Matthews, says Conley was sober when he left their trailer just before 10 p.m. the night he died. How, the Lanes wonder, could their son have reached a blood-alcohol level twice the Wyoming legal limit of 0.10 percent in an hour?
The Lanes also base their skepticism on a police blood test that showed Yearsley, the driver of the other car, had a blood-alcohol level of 0.11 percent. The accident reconstruction shows that he also was speeding.
They then point to an April 18, 1994, letter that Jackson attorney David Lewis - the third attorney to work on the suit for the Lanes - wrote to another attorney they hired. In it, Lewis mentions that the highway patrolman who investigated the accident was ``upset with the favorable treatment received by Yearsley.''
But, police and prosecutors say, the accident still was not Yearsley's fault. Even if he had been sober and driving the speed limit, they say, Yearsley could not have avoided the collision.
The patrolman, Delane Baldwin, doesn't remember saying anything about favoritism to Lewis.
``I cannot say that he received preferential treatment,'' he says. ``I do wish we would have charged him with DUI.''
Teton County Prosecuting Attorney Steve Weichman says he ``can't even answer'' charges of favoritism except to say that his office has a mission to keep drunken drivers off the road.
He says the reason Yearsley wasn't charged is that, in this instance, Wyoming law got in the way of law enforcement.
Weichman says that on the night of the accident, Baldwin said he wanted to charge Yearsley with driving under the influence, but he didn't have probable cause. In Wyoming, a blood test is not admissible in court in a DUI case unless the suspect is charged with DUI before the test is taken.
Weichman says he told Baldwin to take the blood anyway. He knew the blood test still might be valuable if other charges were placed against Yearsley.
Baldwin says he never questioned what Weichman told him to do. But he misunderstood the DUI law. He thought he still would be able to charge Yearsley when the blood test results came back.
Weichman believes it's an injustice that the law got in the way this time.
``There's glaring evidence that there was DUI here. [Yearsley] should have been prosecuted, but we couldn't.''
For the moment, the Lanes hang their need for closure on a hope that the people involved will tell a different story when they are in court, under oath.
Jeri Lane says if it comes down to her having to accept that her son made a decision to get into a car with a drunken driver, she'll have to accept that.
``I don't know,'' she says. ``We chose our hell by pursuing this, I guess you'd say.''
They have higher hopes for Conley.
``He would go up there [to Montana] and just lay on that land and daydream about what all he was going to do,'' Jim Lane says. ``I hope he's doing it all somewhere.''
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB