Jurors mulling guilt or innocence of driver in East Hanover fatal

MORRISTOWN - An emotional defense attorney Wednesday ridiculed the evidence and implored a Morris County jury to acquit Vanessa E. Brown while a calm assistant prosecutor advised using "reason, not emotion" in deciding whether the accused drunken driver recklessly killed Ralph Politi Jr. in East Hanover.

READ UPDATED STORY: NOT GUILTY: Morris jury clears Vanessa Brown in East Hanover DWI fatal 

"End this madness," defense lawyer Edward Bilinkas said at the end of a two-hour closing trial statement in Superior Court. "End this nightmare. Free Vanessa Brown!"

Assistant Prosecutor John McNamara Jr.'s subdued demeanor in his two-hour summation sharply contrasted with Bilinkas' tone and he made a few self-deprecating comments about being part of a "conspiracy" to demonize and convict Brown, as Bilinkas had alleged law enforcement authorities tried to do.

The jury heard 12 days of testimony before Superior Court Judge Salem Vincent Ahto in Morristown in the trial of Brown, a 35-year-old Parsippany woman who is charged with aggravated manslaughter and vehicular homicide in the May 5, 2012 death of Politi, 49. After the summations, Ahto gave jurors the charge, or legal definitions and findings they must make in their deliberations on the charges. The legal charge extended into the afternoon and the jury will return Thursday to start deliberations.

"This case is riddled with reasonable doubt," Bilinkas said in picking apart testimony from the majority of the witnesses who he said had some sort of relationship with the victim, a popular businessman in East Hanover and member of the board of education.

Bilinkas in particular zeroed in on East Hanover Police Sgt. John "Jack" Ambrose, who freely admitted during his testimony that he was close friends with Politi and was responsible for securing arrest and search warrants against Brown after the crash outside 30 Ridgedale Avenue.

But McNamara told jurors that being friends with a victim is "not a crime," and that many of the witnesses -- such as the forensic chemist who tested Brown's blood-alcohol content after the crash and the forensic alcohol consultant who extrapolated the blood test to determine Brown's level of intoxication at the time of the 1:48 p.m. crash -- had no reason to be biased for or against the victim or defendant.

  SEE ALSO: Accused East Hanover drunken driver declines to testify http://dailyre.co/1MkQiUf

McNamara said the physical evidence -- the catastrophic injuries to the victim and the damage to his Chevrolet pickup -- are also neutral indicators of the force of the crash. While Bilinkas was on the verge of tears at points in his summation, and Brown was sobbing by its end, McNamara asked jurors to think critically of all the evidence and not let emotion come into play.

The evidence had shown that Brown went to a home in East Hanover around 11 a.m. on May 5, 2012 to help a child she knows get ready to make her first Holy Communion at St. Rose of Lima Church. Brown then showed up at the church around 12:30 p.m. and was seen sitting in her Toyota Camry in the parking lot of the church around 1:30 p.m. Coincidentally, the victim had stopped by the same church shortly before his death to discuss the sale of raffle tickets with a parishioner.

  READ ALSO: Morris jury sees footage of fatal East Hanover crash http://dailyre.co/1p3fpQO

When struck at 1:48 p.m., the victim was standing outside his pickup truck, which was parked in a parking lot space that was parallel to the shoulder of Ridgedale Avenue. A surveillance camera caught the images of Brown's car traveling down Ridgedale Avenue, drifting from one lane to the other and then off the road to strike Politi as he stood between the open driver's side door and rear door of his pickup.

McNamara said the scrapes and evidence on Politi's pickup show that Brown's Camry had already impacted the pickup before hitting the pickup doors and Politi.

"Her!" McNamara bellowed. "She was the cause of Ralph Politi's death."  Noting that Brown's blood-alcohol content was measured at .133 percent two and one-half hours after the crash, McNamara said that Brown was not "passed-out drunk" but was intoxicated enough to be oblivious to Politi's massive, white vehicle parked next to the road. In New Jersey, a motorist is deemed legally intoxicated if his blood-alcohol content is 0.08 percent or higher.

"If Ralph Politi was doing jumping jacks in the middle lane, a motorist still has an obligation not to run them over," McNamara said, arguing that Brown's alleged intoxication made her disregard risks of which she should have been aware.

Bilinkas urged jurors to disregard the state's evidence, particularly the observations of Ambrose, the East Hanover detective, and the blood draw that allegedly showed Brown was intoxicated. The prosecutor's office had unexpectedly discovered midway through the trial that the tubes of blood holding Brown's blood sample from 2012 had broken and the blood had oozed into the plastic bag containing the vials.

McNamara said the state does not know how the vials broke while preserved as evidence but that the sample's current condition is irrelevant to the tests taken in 2012 that showed Brown was intoxicated. Bilinkas argued the broken vials are indicative of evidence mishandling throughout the case.

"That fact alone, that condition (of the blood) means you should acquit my client," Bilinkas said.

To support its case that Brown -- who previously was convicted of DWI in Tinton Falls in 2009 -- was exhibiting signs of intoxication hours before the crash, McNamara and Assistant Prosecutor Brian Kenney had called witnesses who had seen Brown do a U-turn on a lawn on Troy Road in East Hanover and allegedly act oddly at the church during the Communion mass by standing against a wall rocking herself and not sitting or kneeling as other mass-goers were.

For testimony about Brown's demeanor at the church, the Prosecutor's Office had flown in one witness from Rome, where he is studying to be a priest, and another witness from South Carolina. The U-turn that Brown did on a lawn on Troy Road damaged the splash-guard on the undercarriage of her Camry, according to testimony.

Bilinkas was sarcastic as he showed the jury a few tiny fasteners that came off the Camry's splash guard during the U-turn.

"This is the remains of the horrific accident on Troy Road," Bilinkas said. "Troy Road is a non-entity.  It's stretching the truth. They're trying to convince you that my client's driving was outrageous on that day."

Bilinkas told jurors that Brown -- who has been in custody on $400,000 bail in the Morris County jail since her arrest in 2012 -- was momentarily distracted while driving and struck Politi. Referring to trial testimony about the elevated risks of having a crash if driving under the influence, McNamara said that if any distraction occurred, the crash isn't excusable as divided attention is a known result of driving while intoxicated.

McNamara replayed for the jury the surveillance footage that showed the fatal collision.

"No other car had any difficulty avoiding his truck," McNamara said. "No other car ran him over."

 Staff Writer Peggy Wright: 973-267-1142; pwright@GannettNJ.com.