From today's paper:
Car's black box may be key in murder case
BY CHAU LAM
STAFF WRITER
September 14, 2004
The so-called automobile black box, a device that helps determine what happened in the seconds leading up to a collision, has emerged as a key piece of evidence in the murder case against two North Shore men who allegedly caused a crash in 2002 that killed a Westbury couple.
The apparatus, similar to a flight data recorder found in airplanes, was factory-installed in the 2000 Corvette driven by Kyle Soukup, then 17, of Brookville. Nassau prosecutors said Soukup was racing against a second driver, Blake Slade, then 19, of Muttontown, who was driving a 2002 Mercedes. Their cars plowed into a Jeep, killing Sophia Bretous, 23, and her fiance, Jean Desir, 31.
Data stored in the Corvette's black box, officially known as an event data recorder, showed that four and five seconds before the crash Soukup was driving at 139 mph, said Assistant District Attorney Michael Walsh. Soukup and Slade were driving in a 55 mph zone. Both have been indicted on two counts of second-degree murder under the theory of depraved indifference to human life.
Walsh is asking Court of Claims Justice Alan Honorof in Mineola to permit him to use data retrieved from the Corvette's black box as evidence in Soukup's and Slade's upcoming murder trial. Information retrieved from a vehicle's black box has never been admitted as evidence in a criminal case in New York, Walsh said, although other states, such as California and Florida, have allowed it.
A hearing began Monday, and is expected to last several days, to determine whether technology found in the automobile black boxes is generally accepted by experts in the accident reconstruction field. At the conclusion of the hearing, Honorof will decide whether or not jurors will be allowed to hear the information.
The use of black boxes in automobiles has raised concerns about privacy rights among some.
Mark Rasch, senior vice president of Solutionary, Inc., an Omaha, Neb.-based computer security company said most consumers don't know their movements are being recorded and said they should be allowed to opt out of the surveillance. Rasch, the former head of the U.S. Justice Department's computer crime unit, added that anyone interested in obtaining the data from a vehicle should be allowed to do so only with a court order. Lawmakers in California, for example, passed a law recently requiring just that.
On June 10, 2002, police said, Soukup and Slade were driving north on Route 106 in Muttontown. Witnesses told police that the teenagers were driving side-by-side as they accelerated, which Walsh said indicated they were engaging in a speeding contest. Bretous and Desir, riding in the 1993 Jeep, were turning left from Route 106 onto Muttontown Road, when their Jeep was slammed by the cars driven by Soukup and Slade.
Although it's rare to prosecute a person for murder in fatal car crashes, Walsh said his office decided to do so in this case due to several factors, including the fact that Soukup and Slade were reckless, racing in an area where there are homes with driveways leading onto Route 106, Walsh said. But the main factor his office is prosecuting the young men for murder, Walsh said, was the excessive speed.
"There comes a point in time where speed alone is enough," Walsh said Monday.
William R. Haight, an accident reconstruction expert at the San Diego-based Collision Safety Institute who testified for the prosecution, said the black box technology has been used by the aviation industry since the 1940s. He has conducted test of car crashes and compared the results to the data found in a car's black box and found that they are virtually the same.
"Time after time after time, we get the same answer," Haight testified Monday.
Attorneys for Soukup, now 19, declined to comment but they appeared to attack the data's accuracy with the introduction at the hearing of two published articles written by those in the accident reconstruction field.
John Kase, the attorney for Slade, who is now 21, said his client was speeding but not as fast as the prosecution claims. Kase, of Garden City, said he is opposed to allowing data from the Corvette's black box into trial but finds it more troubling that his client has been charged with murder.
"I have been unable to find any prosecution where speed alone is the basis for murder," Kase said.
Gladys and Ferne Bretous, parents of the dead woman, attended the hearing. The impact of the crash broke the Jeep into three pieces, Ferne Bretous said. "It's got to be murder," he said.
Staff writer Zachary R. Dowdy contributed to this story.
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
