Emotion spilled over Wednesday as the verdict came in for a motorist on trial over the deaths of a man and his granddaughter as they rode their bikes.
A dozen Jackson County residents deliberated for five hours before finding William K. Johnson not guilty of two counts of involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of Larry Gaunt, 59, and Sierra Gaunt, 14.
The Gaunt family and their supporters reacted with sobs and buried their heads in their hands.
Anthony Gaunt, father of Sierra and son of Larry, struggled to stay on his feet. Outside the courthouse, he angrily demanded to know how a person could get away with plowing into and killing two people.
Johnson, 49, tried to remain stoic after the verdict. But he soon pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his eyes. As the Gaunts filed past, one of Johnson’s supporters began to cry.
Those emotions had been building since Aug. 6, when the elder Gaunt was helping Sierra prepare for an MS-150 bike ride, a long-distance ride that benefits victims of multiple sclerosis. It was her first. An avid cyclist, her grandfather had pedaled through about a dozen of the events.
The two were nearing Harry Truman Drive when Johnson’s blue 1985 Chevrolet pickup slammed into their bikes, throwing them to the pavement. Larry Gaunt died at the scene. Sierra died at a hospital.
The question was whether the collision constituted a crime. Prosecutors said yes, and called Johnson’s actions reckless.
They pointed to police calculations that determined that Johnson was going at least 54 mph in a 45 mph zone. They called witnesses who testified that the road was flat, straight and dry. They continually went back to evidence that showed the left lane next to Johnson was completely clear.
That’s what baffled assistant prosecutor Traci Stansell. When Johnson took the witness stand Wednesday, he said he often drove that stretch of road. He knew cyclists frequented it, he said.
He was 960 feet — more than three football fields — away from the Gaunts when he first saw them. And more than 12 seconds passed before he caught up to them. Yet Johnson, a handyman who was taking his son to football practice, agreed that he never moved into the open left lane and never slowed down until slamming on his brakes right before the impact.
Just because Johnson did not move over, that did not make him a criminal, defense attorney Brian Greer argued.
“There is no law requiring operators of motor vehicles to switch lanes of a roadway when there is a vehicle on the shoulder except when that vehicle is law enforcement,” he told jurors.
Greer pointed to police tests that showed Johnson was not under the influence of alcohol or drugs. He highlighted accounts of witnesses who testified that the Gaunts were on or near the shoulder before the accident.
He said that when those same witnesses saw the Gaunts in the roadway just before being struck, the testimony backed up Johnson’s account that they swerved in front of him.
Greer questioned much of the state’s evidence, especially calculations by police that determined Johnson was speeding.
During closing arguments, he said the state took wrong measurements and failed to consider the truck’s extra weight when computing its minimum speed.
“That’s important,” he told jurors. “They’re claiming he was speeding, and because of his speeding he is criminally negligent.”
The jury foreman said deliberations were divided at times, and that jurors discussed a lesser charge, but came to the unanimous decision on acquittal. When asked what they relied on to reach that decision, she said: “The evidence that we had.”
Perhaps lost amid two days of testimony from eyewitnesses and traffic officers, from accident photos and autopsy reports, was a simple exchange between Stansell the prosecutor and the defendant Johnson.
“Do you know what ‘share the road’ means?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered.
More than once, Johnson was asked why he didn’t move over into the clear left lane. Force of habit, he replied. It was, he said, his driving style.
