Text size:

Legacy of the Heidgen case

Legal community tries to figure out what rare murder conviction in drunken driving crash means for future

BY ANN GIVENS | Newsday Staff Writer

October 22, 2006

For six weeks, drunken driving in America was typified by one case: the murder trial of Martin Heidgen.

CNN arrived at the Mineola courthouse, then Geraldo Rivera. The case was at the top of the AOL home page, along with a poll asking readers whether they would convict the 25-year-old Valley Stream man, who drove drunk the wrong way on the Meadowbrook Parkway in July 2005, slamming into a limousine and killing two people. At the height of the frenzy, Kathleen Rice, the hard-driving new Nassau district attorney who has made drunken driving a favorite cause, was even asked to sign on for a reality television series.

Now, with the news trucks and cameras gone until Heidgen is sentenced Nov. 27, Rice and others in the legal community are left to wonder what the legacy of the Heidgen case will be.

"I'm going to use it as a springboard," said Rice, who plans to meet with state Sen. Charles Fuschillo (R-Merrick) in the next several weeks to discuss ways to toughen drunken driving penalties.

While Heidgen's murder conviction was rare, it was not precedent-setting and is still subject to an appeal. Legal experts agree that it does not fling open the doors for all drunken drivers who kill people to be charged with murder. Murder charges will still be limited to the rare cases in which a person not only drives drunk and kills someone, but where there is evidence that the defendant did not care whether others lived or died, legal experts said. Indeed, on the day Heidgen was convicted, Suffolk prosecutors announced that they will not seek a murder conviction against Karen Fisher, the East Hampton woman accused of killing a priest in a hit-and-run accident while driving drunk.

Instead, prosecutors say the Heidgen case puts a face on a drunken driving crash, and may motivate lawmakers and the public to move toward tougher laws.

Reality of a crash

Drunken driving is a crime that's sometimes not taken seriously, because many people know someone who has driven drunk or they've done it themselves, said Marcia Cunningham, director of the National Traffic Law Center of the National District Attorneys Association.

But the Heidgen trial offered people a look at what a drunken driving crash really looks like. In this case, it was Katie Flynn, a 7-year-old child beheaded in an instant, limo driver Stanley Rabinowitz killed and their families destroyed. Rice said Katie's grandparents, Chris and Denise Tangney, have said they are eager to help her personalize the results of drunken driving by accompanying her to speaking engagements and lobbying events.

"If seeing this case doesn't make you wake up and say you shouldn't be drinking and driving, I don't know what will," said Nassau police spokesman Lt. Kevin Smith. Heidgen faces a maximum prison sentence of 25 years to life.

Rice said she will use the momentum from this conviction to ask the State Legislature to better define depraved indifference murder, the crime Heidgen was charged with. A recent appellate case made it tougher to prove depraved indifference. Prosecutors are now required to get into each defendant's head and show a defendant was in a depraved state of mind when the crime occurred. Rice wants the law returned to its earlier standard, when prosecutors just had to show that a defendant's actions were evidence of him having a depraved mind.

"The Flynns, the Tangneys and the Rabinowitzes never should have had to suffer through the jury's deliberations on what was going on in Heidgen's mind," said Maureen McCormick, who prosecuted the case.

End seen to free 'pass'

McCormick said Heidgen's case, if upheld on appeal, will set a precedent that being above the legal intoxication limit does not negate the possibility that a defendant was in a depraved state of mind.

"You don't get a pass just because you're drunk," McCormick said.

Edward Fiandach, a Rochester defense lawyer and former dean of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said drunken driving laws have been getting tougher for years.

"The success in prosecution has to do with the fact they are dealing with horrible facts," he said. He and other defense lawyers say a defendant's rights should not get lost amid the emotional weight of a terrible crash.

Rice said if it's possible that there is a positive outcome to such an awful case, it is that now she can put a face on drunken driving - the photos of the mangled limousine and pickup truck and the smiling faces of Katie Flynn and Stanley Rabinowitz.

"People need to understand that drinking and driving is not acceptable," Cunningham said. "And this is why."