The Ledger
LAKELAND, Fla. — A 15-month FDLE investigation has cleared the Polk County Sheriff’s Office and a former deputy of responsibility in a fatal 2002 crash.
In a report released Wednesday, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said former Sgt. Scott Lawson was not responsible for the crash that killed a Polk County teenager. Lawson was pursuing the car on a dark and curvy road in his unmarked car, without lights or sirens activated.
The FDLE report also found the Sheriff’s Office did not hide evidence in its investigation of the crash.
“There is no cover-up,” Chief Gary Hester of the Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday.
The FDLE reported that “private investigator Wayne Tucci ... found no evidence of damage (to Lawson’s car) and photographed the vehicle from different angles.”
But the Sheriff’s Office found that Lawson had violated the agency’s policies in the chase.
The 15-mile chase reaching speeds of more than 100 miles per hour ended in the pre-dawn hours of May 31, 2002, about 10 miles east of Lake Hamilton.
With Lawson’s unmarked car close behind, Adam Jacoby of Dundee crashed his Volkswagen Passat into pine trees near a curve on Lake Hatchineha Road, shearing his car in two, and ejecting and killing 16-year-old Miles White, his lone passenger.
Jacoby is the son of former state Rep. Marty Bowen, a Haines City Republican and member of a prominent citrus family.
And Tucci was working for Jacoby’s defense team.
Traffic detectives investigating the accident blamed Jacoby, who was 18 years old at the time.
But after years of protest by Miles White’s parents, Gary and Jamie White, the Governor’s Office requested in January 2009 that FDLE investigate the case.
The Whites had long demanded an independent investigation of the Sheriff’s Office, saying Lawson directly caused the crash by striking the back of Jacoby’s Passat.
The Sheriff’s Office maintained Jacoby, who they said was driving drunk, bore sole responsibility.
The case was complicated by the fact that shortly after the crash, Lawson was arrested for molesting young men. He was ultimately convicted of those charges.
FDLE investigation
FDLE investigators interviewed 23 people, including White’s parents, Jacoby, Sheriff’s Office Chief Gary Hester and several deputies.
Prompted by details reported in The St. Petersburg Times, the agency focused on four main questions:
Was the Polk County Sheriff’s Office aware of allegations of sexual misconduct against Lawson before the traffic crash?
Did Lawson’s vehicle strike Jacoby’s car, causing the crash?
Where was Lawson’s vehicle taken after the accident?
Who ordered deputies to refrain from speaking to Lawson after the crash?
Among their conclusions:
Sheriff’s officials were not aware of the sexual misconduct allegations until after the crash.
Speed caused Jacoby’s car to hurtle past the curve and off the road, not impact with Lawson’s car.
After the crash, there did not appear to be any effort to conceal Lawson’s unmarked car when it was taken to a Sheriff’s Office substation parking lot.
And Sheriff’s Office investigators said they refrained from speaking to Lawson after the crash because he was in the hospital.
By the time Lawson was discharged from the hospital, he had left the Sheriff’s Office and was facing charges in the sex cases.
Hester told the FDLE that his investigators did not talk to Lawson because he was no longer a deputy and they had a copy of his crash report.
In the 2002 internal administrative investigation into the crash, Lawson was found guilty of violating department pursuit policy by not conducting a traffic stop, by driving above the speed limit and by running stop signs in his unmarked car while not in emergency mode.
Whether Lawson struck Jacoby’s car, he was never punished. He had resigned after tips poured into the Sheriff’s Office that he had given illegal medical exams to young men he met on the job.
He’s serving a 15-year prison sentence in Vermont after being found guilty in Polk County of sexual battery and practicing medicine without a license.
Jacoby pleaded no contest to manslaughter and was sentenced in 2005 to six years of probation, which he was allowed to complete early in October 2008.
Reaction to the report
Hester said Wednesday he was not surprised with the FDLE’s findings.
“We investigated the sexual conduct and the crash, and we put Scott Lawson in prison for 15 years.”
“Why would we then not put him in jail or hold him accountable for the crash if he’s the one who caused the crash?” Hester asked. “There’s no reason or motive for us to do that.”
When The St. Petersburg Times investigated the case, the newspaper consulted a number of experts who seemed to support the Whites’ opinion about who was responsible for the crash.
In the FDLE report, some of those experts distanced themselves from statements carried in the Times.
National Editor Richard Bockman of the St. Petersburg Times said, “We believe that all of our quotes are accurate and we stand by the story.”
The Whites did not return phone calls Wednesday.
The crash
On the night of the crash, the teens had gone to a party in Winter Haven where Jacoby got into a fight.
The two friends had just fled the fight when Lawson, on patrol for stolen cars, spotted them in the Passat. He pulled behind them in his unmarked Crown Victoria and Jacoby sped up.
Miles White’s parents have said they think Lawson might have been pursuing the Passat because he had seen its teenage occupants and was interested in a sexual encounter.
Jacoby might have thought Lawson, driving his unmarked car, was one of the young men from the party.
That night, according to a Sheriff’s Office internal investigation, Lawson chased Jacoby’s car more than 15 miles through Lake Hamilton. He never activated his emergency lights or sirens or identified himself as a law enforcement officer.
He told dispatch he wasn’t in pursuit, but he reached speeds of up to 120 mph.
He continued, even after a dispatcher ran the Passat’s license number and told him the car was not stolen.
Moments later, Jacoby’s car crashed.
Jacoby was charged with vehicular homicide and DUI manslaughter, based on the hospital’s reading of Jacoby’s blood-alcohol level at 0.096.
Those results, above Florida’s legal limit of 0.08, were later contested, and Jacoby pleaded no contest to a lesser charge of manslaughter.
But the Whites have said the Sheriff’s Office had the wrong man. They want the Sheriff’s Office, not Jacoby, to be held accountable.
“I think if you read the case, it’s pretty cut-and-dry that the officer chased the boys to their death. A lunatic monster with no lights and siren chased them down to their death,” Gary White said last year.
The Whites are continuing their long legal battle with the Sheriff’s Office.
In their first wrongful death lawsuit in 2004, the county offered the family a $200,000 settlement. The Whites declined that offer and continued with the case.
But in 2006, a federal judge ruled in favor of the defendants, concluding the Whites’ lawyers had not offered enough evidence to establish a constitutional violation.
About a month later, the Whites filed their second lawsuit. The Sheriff’s Office offered a settlement of $100.
The case is now ongoing in the 10th Judicial Circuit.
Copyright 2010 The Ledger