PERRYVILLE - A former prosecutor who killed an elderly couple in a car crash was sentenced to eight years in prison Wednesday after a Perry County jury convicted him of two counts of manslaughter.
Vance Benton Rollins Jr., 58, of Hot Springs, was charged in the deaths of 76-year-old Lawrence Humphries and his 69-year-old wife, Nina, on March 22, 2006, when Rollins, driving a 2002 red Ford Explorer, struck their car head-on on Arkansas 7, about 1.5 miles north of the Garland County line.
Rollins, a former Ouachita County deputy prosecutor and Camden city attorney, did not testify. He faced six to 20 years on the Class C felony charges and will be eligible for parole after serving 16 months. In May, he settled a lawsuit for $250,000over the crash that was filed by the Plainview couple's children.
Faith Ann Lacey Miller of Booneville and her mother, Linda Brewer, a nurse, saw the crash and stopped to help. Theimpact had pushed the motor of the couple's 1988 Ford Tempo into the front seat between the Humphrieses, Miller told jurors, and the dashboard was pressed against them.
Nina Humphries had her right hand on the dash, as if trying to brace herself, Miller testified, describing how bones were jutting from the woman's wrist. She told jurors she saw the unconscious woman die.
"She was gone," Miller testified. "I started saying the Lord's Prayer."
Miller said she moved to the driver's side to help her mother with Lawrence Humphries, patting his arm as he moaned and urging him to hold on until help arrived. Miller told jurors that the steering wheel had crushed his chest and she heard him take his last breath.
"I heard this noise like air escaping," she said. "I checked his pulse, and he was gone. So I said the Lord's Prayer."
Brewer, Miller and Miller's three children had been behind the couple's car, and Miller told jurors that she saw Rollins looking back over his right shoulder just before he drove into the oncoming lane.
"When they hit, the [Humphrieses'] car kind of came up and into the air and back toward us," she testified, adding that the car briefly caught fire. "He never appeared to slow down," she said.
Another driver, O.J. Williams, and his wife, Barbara, testified that the red sport utility vehicle had been tailgating them just before the crash. Williams said he twice slowed down and moved over so the SUV could pass, but the Explorer wouldn't go around him.
"There was plenty of opportunity I gave him so he could pass. He kept riding my bumper," Williams told jurors. "He never did try to pass. He was making me nervous ... jittery."
He testified that he finally pulled off the road and stopped for a few minutes before continuing the trip. Williams said they drove up on the crash site and recognized the Explorer.
Rollins and his girlfriend, 49-year-old Molly Langford, were injured in the crash. Rollins was able to squeeze out of the Explorer, but Miller, Brewer and some other passers-by hadto pull an unconscious Langford, bleeding from a broken leg, from the back seat. Brewer told jurors that she saw Rollins take green pills from his pocket and throw them on the side of the road. She collected three of them for investigators and they turned out to be hydrocodone, a narcotic pain reliever.
She also described how Rollins appeared to be searching the vehicle's front seat as rescuers were tending to Langford.
State trooper Greg McNeese, the crash investigator, later told jurors that he found a bag of clothes that also contained three drug pipes, each tainted with cocaine, on the front floorboards of the sport utility vehicle. Blood tests showed that Rollins had trace amounts of cocaine and the prescription antidepressant Zoloft in his system.
Defense attorneys barely questioned the witnesses, challenging only testimony that Rollins could have used cocaine within eight hours of the 3 p.m. crash. They suggested that misdemeanor negligent homicide charges were more appropriate.
Perry County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jonathan Ross acknowledged that he couldn't prove that Rollins' driving was affected by the cocaine. But he argued that Rollins' driving and willingness to use drugs showed that he had deliberately ignored driving safety standards, turning the Humphrieses drive that day into a game of Russian roulette.
"They didn't know they were playing that game," Ross said.
The eight women and four men on the jury took just under two hours to find Rollins guilty, then spent another 25 minutes deliberating punishment before recommending that Circuit Judge Timothy Fox impose two four-year sentences to be run consecutively.
Arguing for a lower sentence, defense attorney Betsy Johnston asked jurors to consider the prospects of rehabilitating Rollins.
"What is the value of Mr. Rollins sitting in the Arkansas Department of Correction for 20 years versus the opportunityfor ... correcting the really bad behavior ... getting him back on the right road and making him stay there?" she said.
Rollins' legal problems are not over. He still faces drug charges in Ouachita County stemming from his December arrest there on the manslaughter charges. The deputy who took him into custody said he found Rollins with two rocks of crack cocaine and two crack pipes. Rollins' trial is scheduled for December.
Arkansas, Pages 14 on 10/26/2007