In the trial of Trooper Robert Higbee for vehicular homicide today a NJ State Trooper is testifying about his reconstruction of the accident. In his recitation of credentials he included a course he took at Northwestern University (of which I am an alum) in crash reconstruction. This reminded me that the nation’s first crime lab was established at Northwestern to investigate the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. It was that lab that invented the technique of matching bullets to guns by the markings.

This connection to the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre is interesting—and not irrelevant. If you recall, the Capone Gang wiped out the Bugs Moran Gang in 1929 by disguising themselves as Chicago cops, then lined their rivals up against a wall in a garage and shot them with “tommy guns,” the automatic weapons of the day. In the aftermath a number of police officers were charged with corruption.

Police corruption, such as Chicago was plagued with during the Prohibition Era, is what citizens expect the state to investigate and prosecute—not, in my humble opinion, police lapses in judgment. If you read the NJ statute on vehicular homicide (link above) in lawyer Kenneth Vercammen’s Criminal-Jury blog, you will see that the only element of the law at issue in the Trooper Higbee case is “recklessness”:

• “A person acts recklessly when (he/she) consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that death will result from (his/her) conduct. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that, considering the nature and purpose of the defendant's conduct and the circumstances known to (him/her), disregard of the risk involves a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the defendant's situation.”

As always, it’s the words that matter. I hope the Higbee jury can read and that Judge Raymond Batten doesn’t rewrite the statute in his instructions to the jury—the way the judge did in the case for which I served as a juror.