“Lie still – Life Flight’s on the way.”
Doug Towell vaguely
remembers hearing those words while prone and bleeding from a head wound on
Idaho State Highway 21. His next memory is of being seized by irrepressible panic.
“My wife!” he exclaimed. “Where’s my wife?”
Chellus, Doug’ wife of 25 years, had been riding on the
backseat of Doug’s Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
“She’s over there with my friend,” Doug was told. “My friend
is a nurse, and your wife will be all right.”
That comforting voice was immediately eclipsed by another in the distance.
“We’ve got to control her bleeding,” the second voice said,
the words drawn taut with urgency.
Doug’s next memory is waking up in the emergency room, his
body a mass of pain and his heart burdened with guilt.
“It took me a couple years to get her on the bike,” Doug
pointed out as he described the September 14 accident during an interview in
his home in Ontario, Oregon. “I told her, `as long as you ride with me, nothing’s
going to happen.’ And now, all of a sudden, we’re in a crash. I don’t know her
condition, and I’m thinking, `Man, I hurt my wife’.”
At the time, Doug was dealing with the immediate
after-effects of a concussion, a broken scapula, and several broken ribs. He
was on pain medication and had staples in his scalp. As Doug bobbed in and out
of consciousness, he was asked questions by figures he only dimly saw, and
could not recognize: Had he been drinking? Would he consent to a blood sample?
“I thought those people were doctors,” Doug recalls.
It’s quite likely that they were deputies from the Boise
County Sheriff’s Office, whose colleague, Reserve Deputy David Lee, caused the accident that nearly killed Doug and Chellus.
Lee, who is still a reserve deputy with the force, executed
an illegal U-turn on a narrow stretch of Highway 21 in order to pursue a
speeder. According to eyewitnesses, he didn’t activate his lights or siren
until after that catastrophic maneuver. The witnesses also insist that Doug was
following at a safe distance before Deputy Lee’s actions caused him to hit the
brakes.
“I saw the bike fishtail and wobble,” reported Anne
Pelletier, who was traveling behind the Towells. “It just happened so quick. It
was like no one had a chance to do anything.”
From her vantage point, it seemed
clear that Lee “was just trying to catch the speeders on Highway 21,” and made
the abrupt U-turn without giving Towell -- or the other motorists -- time to adjust.
Doug’s Harley rolled over him, causing significant injuries
from which he has largely recovered. Chellus, however, was thrown head-first to
the pavement, resulting in traumatic brain injury that may leave her
permanently disabled.
According
to Boise County Sheriff Ben Roeber, David Lee – whose actions caused the
accident -- is still a reserve deputy. He has been cited
for unsafe operation of an emergency vehicle, a violation that carries a
$40 fine.
Doug Towell has been charged
with Aggravated Driving under the Influence, a
felony that carries a potential prison sentence of 15 years in prison.
The work
of official fiction composed by the Boise County Prosecuting Attorney claims
that Doug, while operating his Harley in an impaired state, caused “great
bodily harm [and] permanent disability” to his wife Chellus.
The proximate cause of that nearly fatal crash was the
culpable negligence of an opportunistic reserve deputy employed by a county
government that is ravenous for revenue. Nothing in Doug Towell’s bloodstream
contributed to Deputy Lee’s misconduct, and Deputy Lee’s comrades have no legal
right to use the results of the blood analysis performed in the emergency room.
The toxicology
report by Boise’s Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center states, in
English simple enough to be understood by police officers and clear enough to
defy prosecutorial sophistry, that “[The] analysis was performed without chain
of custody. These results should be used for medical purposes only and not for any
legal or employment evaluative purposes.” (Emphasis added.)
It is possible that the police siphoned away a specimen of
their own after deceiving Doug into believing that they were ER doctors. In any
case, it will be impossible for the prosecution to demonstrate that this was done with
the voluntary consent of a man who was drugged and had just suffered a
concussion.
Apart from the physical effects of the crash and the drugs
administered by the ER staff, Doug was also overwrought with unearned
self-reproach. He didn’t learn any of the details of the accident until several
days later.
A wiry, energetic man who turns 54 in May, Doug is a native
of Willowcreek, Oregon. After graduating from Vale High School in 1979, he
spent four years in the Army before returning to eastern Oregon. He met Chellus while the
two of them were working at a mushroom processing plant in Vale.
“I didn’t have a car at the time, and one Friday night she
invited me to a party she and her friends were having at her house,” Doug
recounts. They were married a little more than a year later. Were it not for
the accident last September, the couple would have celebrated their 25th
anniversary with a trip to the Dominican Republic.
For the past several years, Doug has worked at a shelter
home operated by his family for mentally troubled adults. Since the accident
last September, he has spent all of his free time working as primary caretaker
for Chellus, who is – temporarily, let us pray –incapacitated and unable to
speak.
Earlier this year, Doug filed a notice of tort claim against
Boise County, seeking compensation for the enormous – and growing – medical expenses
involved in his wife’s rehabilitation. A few weeks later, he received a phone
call from the County Prosecutor informing him that a felony charge had been
filed against him, and inviting him to make the 85-mile trip from Ontario,
Oregon to Idaho City to turn himself in.
One need not be bent double beneath the weight of cynicism
to suspect that the criminal charge was inspired, at least in part, by a desire
to head off a potentially troublesome lawsuit – just as the Boise County
deputies who visited Doug in the ER immediately treated him as a suspect,
rather than a victim.
In this connection it is important to note that the Boise
County Sheriff’s Office has a pattern and practice of extorting self-incriminating
samples in hospitals from people frantic to know the condition of loved ones.
Last May 23, Lawrence Lutton was in a crash at Arrowrock
Reservoir. He was sitting in a hospital room, when he saw grim-faced emergency
personnel pushing a gurney containing his traumatized two-year-old son, Riley. At
the time, hospital chaplain Karla Sampson testified, Lutton was surrounded by
officers – two in the hospital room, two more outside. In her nine years as
chaplain at St. Luke’s Hospital, Karla told Fourth District Judge Patrick Owen,
she had never seen a patient confined in that fashion.
“I started getting up and was told to sit back down,” Lutton
explained during a March 13 hearing at the Boise County Courthouse. The
officers told him that he wouldn’t be allowed to see his son “until I gave a
blood sample.”
Riley didn’t survive.
The test revealed that Lutton’s blood alcohol level was .09,
barely above the state legal limit. He has been charged with felony vehicular
manslaughter. Lutton has filed a motion
to suppress the test results. If Judge Owen has any respect for recent state Supreme
Court precedent, he will have to uphold that motion – and any similar one that
might be filed on behalf of Doug Towell.
Like many other subdivisions within the Soyuz, Idaho has an “implied consent” law under which the helots
are told that they give “irrevocable consent” to an invasive,
self-incriminating procedure – such as a blood test – in exchange for using the
state’s roads.
This is the logic of the sexual predator, as capably expounded
by the sitcom character Dennis Reynolds: The implicit threat of lethal violence
by a prohibitively stronger party
vitiates the need for conscious consent on
the part of the weaker one.
Last October, in Idaho v. Wulff, the state Supreme Court ruled against what might be called the Dennis Reynolds Doctrine of Implied Consent by suppressing DUI evidence obtained through an involuntary, warrantless blood draw. The Court reiterated that reasoning a few months later in Idaho v. Halseth. Both of those decisions apply the same principles upheld by the US Supreme Court in Missouri v. McNeely (2013), which affirmed a state court’s ruling that a nonconsensual DUI blood draw conducted without a warrant violates the Fourth Amendment.
More recently, Idaho’s
Second District Court threw out a warrantless, non-consensual blood draw
imposed on Kyle N. Rios, who was charged with vehicular manslaughter
following a fatal crash in 2013. After Rios refused to sign a waiver, police
ordered a medical technician to carry out the test, which reportedly yielded a
BAC of 0.263, roughly three times the legal limit. If the prosecution wants to
make a case against Rios, it will have to do so with evidence obtained through
constitutionally suitable means.
An individual admitted to a hospital for treatment is a
patient, not a suspect. Medical practitioners have a Hippocratic obligation to
treat the patient, rather than acting as a deputized member of the State’s
enforcement caste. As neurosurgeon and medical ethicist Dr. Miguel Faria puts
it, “The doctor must act in the interest of the patient first; society, the
government, and the police come second.”
When there is a conflict between the medical needs of the
patient and the investigative demands of the police, the latter finish a
distant second – distant to the point of invisibility, in fact. Notes
the American College of Emergency Physicians’ Code of Ethics:
"Courage is the
ability to carry out one’s obligations despite personal risk or danger. The
courageous physician advocates for patients against managed care gatekeepers,
demanding employers [and] interrogating
police…." (Emphasis added.)
In Doug Towell’s case, a conscientious medical professional
would have ordered the police away from the traumatized and drugged patient. This
would mean parrying the predictable plea that the test is justified by the
perishable nature of blood alcohol evidence. As it happens, this “exigent
circumstances” claim was addressed, and rejected, in the Supreme Court’s Neely decision.
The indecent eagerness of the officers to subject Doug Towell
to a blood draw was probably inspired not only by their desire to inculpate the
patient, but also by their frantic efforts to exonerate their comrade. Deputy
Lee’s conduct, furthermore, reflects the torqued priorities of a county
government facing a severe revenue drought.
About five years ago, Boise County (population 6,795) was
slammed with a $5.4 million civil judgment on behalf of the property development
firm Oaas Laney. The firm sued the county under the Fair Housing Act in a
dispute over construction of a proposed teen treatment center called Alamar
Ranch. Shortly thereafter, Chief Judge Terry L. Meyers of the US Bankruptcy Court
ruled
against the county’s request for bankruptcy protection.
Boise County’s annual operating budget is about $9.2 million.
Threatened
with the confiscation of county funds, in 2012 the county commission began
issuing $450,000 annual bonds to pay off the judgment.
“Budgeting is not easy in a county where there is no money,”
explains
Boise County Commissioner Barbara Balding. The only viable industry in the
historic and picturesque county is tourism. Last November, voters approved a
proposal to allow gambling in the county, something that would require an
amendment to the Idaho state constitution.
“We need something that helps us a little bit,” Idaho City
restaurant owner Skip Myers told Boise’s CBS affiliate. “The only money that we
can get into our county is by taxation. Property taxation is … where we make
our money for our road department, for our commissioners to work with, and so
we’re going broke as we speak. We need to do something other [than that] to
gather that up.”
David Lee was acting as a tax-gatherer last September 14
when he caused the accident that nearly killed Doug and Chellus Towell. Lee’s
colleagues – who have displayed a sadistic ingenuity in forcing desperate,
traumatized people to incriminate themselves -- are determined to make the
victims absorb the costs of the deputy’s actions.
Your help in keeping Pro Libertate online is urgently needed, and greatly appreciated.
Dum spiro, pugno!
3 comments:
Wow. I thought that all government agencies were required to have insurance for such lawsuits. When I sued Nampa City for civil rights violations they had insurance. Now Boise County is strapped with one big lawsuit and another is on the way. This is an example of a poor cover up by the police to keep another lawsuit from happening and it will. Illegal Search and Seizure of blood evidence, tainted samples, no chain of evidence, and being ALLOWED by hospital staff to do as they please? Sue the hospital too.
I used to think that William Grigg "cherry picked" for police incidents to report. I no longer think that. I have personally seen incidents of the type reported by Grigg here. Just in the last week I've seen two, one happening directly to me.
Last Friday I watched as a deputy pulled an illegal U turn across a double yellow line at a somewhat complicated intersection (between a light and a separate merger lane), then put the pedal to the metal, chirping the tires on the Chrysler hot rod cruiser, running up to a red light 100 yards up the street. I watched to see if he was going to turn on the lights and siren and continue his "pursuit" through the light. He didn't. He finally succumbed to the restraints of safety and legality and stopped at the light.
The second incident happened yesterday morning just before sunup. I was heading to work on a 70 mph highway and a car rolled a stop sign at an intersection, turning in my direction in front of me, and then did NOT put the pedal to the metal. I had to stand on the brake down to 40 and then, not having seen the insignia on the vehicle in the dark I leaned on the horn to express my displeasure at the rude driving. He pulled to the wide right shoulder, whereupon I saw the insignia, and continued to roll at about 40. If I had not braked hard, my only option would have been an illegal pass over a double yellow line. As it was, I went past him when he pulled to the right and continued, resuming the speed limit. He sped up and fell in behind me for the next 10 minutes.
These are minor incidents, to be sure, but demonstrate their poor attitude and disregard for the safety of people around them. Where are they finding these guys, or what is their training teaching them?
Great article. A small quibble; at the end you said that the cop was acting as a tax collector. He was not collecting a tax; he was seeking a fine. He was a being a revenuer.
Post a Comment