Appeals court upholds two high-profile Whitley County convictions

The Kentucky Court of Appeals issued rulings recently upholding convictions in two Whitley County cases — one involving a high-profile DUI crash on I-75 that resulted in three deaths, and the other a convenience store robbery that resulted in the shooting death of the store clerk.

On May 30, a trio of justices for the Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the conviction and life sentence of Raymond Garner, who was convicted following a trial in 2008 for wanton murder, fetal homicide and first-degree assault. Prior to trial, he pleaded guilty to third-offense DUI and driving on a suspended license.

Garner was traveling north on I-75 because he was in the process of moving from Tennessee to northern Kentucky when he drove his pickup truck across the median and slammed into a car driven by Peter Pontikis, in which his two sons were passengers. He then struck a van driven by Cindy Hass, who was seven months pregnant. She had six passengers in her vehicle.

Haas and her unborn child died in the crash. One of Pontiki’s sons was killed.

Garner was drunk at the time of the accident and his license had been suspended for a DUI conviction just two months prior. It was his second DUI conviction in a five-year span.

According to court records, Garner drank beers while loading his pickup truck for the move and also took some Valium. He also bought a box of wine to drink while on the road to northern Kentucky.

Garner appealed his conviction claiming that an evidentiary hearing should have been held during trial to probe “deficiencies of the trailer, the manner in which it was loaded, and the actions of the driver in front of him…” He says that if that evidence would have been presented by his attorney, he could have been acquitted or, at least, convicted of a lesser offense.

The Court of Appeals upheld Garner’s Circuit Court conviction, saying even if the evidence he wanted to present were true, it would not “mitigate his actions, but instead contributes to the conclusion that he acted wantonly and with extreme indifference to human life.”

The court also noted that evidence was presented at trial regarding the state of the tires, the trailer and the other driver involved.

The judges pointed out that expert testimony during trial showed Garner’s blood alcohol level was likely .25 g/100ml at the time of the wreck, well above the .08 legal limit, and that he was traveling 93 mph and did not attempt to apply his brakes, but was actually accelerating at the time of the crash.

“In light of the strong evidence of guilt, and even accepting all of Garner’s allegations as true, there is no reasonable probability that the outcome of this case would have been different had his attorney employed a different strategy.”

The Court of Appeals also declined to overturn the 1994 conviction of Gerald Gibbins, who was involved in the March 2, 1992 armed robbery of a convenience store that led to the shooting death of a store clerk.

Gibbins claimed in an affidavit that according to co-defendant James Jones, another co-defendant, Ronnie Brooks, actually shot the clerk while he and Jones waited outside in the getaway car.

The court gave little credence to the “new” information in the case, saying that an 18-year delay in presenting the evidence made it inadmissible and not worthy of consideration.

Gibbins claimed Jones did not come forward sooner because he was worried his testimony would endanger his personal safety and the “health and safety of his friends and family if he testified.”

The Appeals Court judges pointed out that this is at least the third time Gibbins has attempted to attack his conviction through the appeals process.