A high profile fatal drunk driving accident that occurred in 2008 and put Cameron Crockett behind bars for eight years may get another look after a seat belt test could prove Cameron wasn’t behind the wheel of the car, reports wtkr.com.
Virginia Beach Police arrested Cameron Crockett for drunk driving and killing his best friend Jack Korte in the 2008 crash, and since then Crockett has been found guilty twice. After his second conviction he fled to Belize, where police caught up to him and Crocket was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Now, with six years left for Crockett to serve, his case may get another look. Eyewitnesses to the accident say that he was found in the backseat and was not wearing a seatbelt. Meanwhile the car was wrapped around a tree.
The seatbelt has been an important factor in Crockett’s defense since the beginning, as his lawyers tried to argue two separate times that there was someone else who drove that vehicle into the tree that night, who was wearing a seatbelt in the driver’s seat, and who was able to get up and walk away from the crash.
That theory has not been proven however, because the seatbelt was not tested until now. Engineers say they ran into roadblocks at the Beach Police impound lots, where officials didn’t allow them to touch the vehicle’s seatbelts. Without the seatbelt test evidence, the only support for Crockett’s third person driver defense was that witnesses found him in the backseat, but they couldn’t believe that a driver could have gotten up and walked away from the crash.
Lawyers for Crockett say that they have new evidence from the seatbelt test that in a retrial could prove Crockett’s innocence. The seatbelt test provides scientific proof that Crockett was not driving, they say, because it concludes that the seatbelt was in use and was activated at the time of the crash, and Crockett’s medical report gives evidence that he did not suffer injuries consistent with a seatbelt. The person who was driving was wearing a seatbelt, and that excludes Crockett as a possible driver, lawyers say.
The seatbelt test result is in front of the Court of Appeals of Virginia right now, who recently accepted a petition submitted by Crockett for an appeal. They will soon decide whether to grant him a retrial.
We will keep you updated as this story unfolds.
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