Linda Kabot acquitted of DWI

Linda Kabot, the former Southampton Town supervisor whose 2009 re-election campaign was derailed in part by drunken-driving charges, was acquitted Friday afternoon on all but one count stemming from the incident.

The verdict, after only an hour of deliberations, left Kabot teary-eyed as she shook hands with jurors shortly after it was announced in Riverhead Town Court.

She told reporters she wasn't ready to discuss her political future.

"My prayers were answered," she said.

Kabot, 43, of Quogue, was cleared of most charges - she was convicted only of failing to stop at a stop sign - despite a police video showing her Toyota Camry weaving in Westhampton Beach late on the evening of Sept. 6, 2009. She was arrested and charged in the early morning of Sept. 7, 2009.

Kabot paid a $200 fine for failing to stop at the stop sign, said her attorney, William Keahon.

Two months after Kabot's arrest, she lost her re-election bid to Democrat Anna Throne-Holst.

Throne-Holst said after the verdict, "I wish her and her family all the best."

Southampton Town Councilwoman Nancy Graboski, a fellow Republican who had served with Kabot, said she was delighted by the verdict.

"I told her, 'Good for you for sticking with your guns,' " Grabowski said.

A spokesman said District Attorney Thomas Spota's office had no comment.

The case against Kabot centered on the video, shot from the dashboard of a police car and showing Kabot taking a field sobriety test.

Westhampton Beach police had said Kabot declined to take a breath test to determine whether she was drunk. On the video, she can be heard refusing three times to take the test.

But Kabot's attorney, William Keahon of Hauppauge, turned the video against prosecutors by saying that it showed Kabot was neither stumbling nor slurring her words.

And, he argued, police violated a department order by stopping the video for three minutes. Police testified that the recording was stopped so they could inspect the video.

Jury forewoman Deborah Rensing said jurors did not believe the police.

"I didn't find them as credible as they should have been," said Rensing, of Wading River. "The fact the camera was stopped and started seemed very suspicious to us."

Attorneys interviewed Friday said they were surprised by the verdict.

But Garden City defense attorney Bruce Barket said the case revealed the limits of field sobriety tests, which he called "junk science."

"Field sobriety tests may be interesting tests of coordination, but they're a very poor test of intoxication," said Barket, a former Nassau prosecutor.

Richard Klein, a professor at Touro Law School in Central Islip, said he was surprised jurors did not convict Kabot for refusing the breath test.

"There is a lesson here for the police not to toy with the video," Klein said.

With Mitchell Freedman