Monte Vista – Even as the handcuffs closed on his wrists, John Wilder couldn’t believe it.
He admitted having had a glass of wine and there was an open airline-size bottle of Ernest & Julio Gallo merlot in his car.
But he didn’t think the trooper who pulled him over had enough proof to arrest him for drunken driving. He thought Colorado State Patrol Cpl. Kevin Turner was trying to railroad him.
Tests later showed Wilder wasn’t drunk. Having an open container was legal at the time, and the charges were dropped. But Wilder filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against the trooper for false arrest. He was determined to fight the law.
And he won – nearly a million dollars.
Ironically, he is the law.
Wilder is a municipal judge in this small southern Colorado town. But Wilder, who bucks tradition by not wearing a robe during court or having people stand when he enters the courtroom, said the longer he thought about it, the more he became convinced that the State Patrol’s drunken-driving arrest standards violated people’s civil rights.
“Ultimately, I realized I had a duty to sue,” said Wilder, 63.
The resulting jury verdict sent waves of disbelief through the State Patrol.
“We were in shock,” State Patrol spokesman Jeff Goodwin said of the verdict, much of which was upheld earlier this month.
U.S. District Judge Wiley Daniel disallowed $150,000 of the million-dollar verdict, saying the judge did not suffer economic damages, such as losing income.
But he upheld the remainder, $850,000, which was awarded for punitive and other damages. Daniel wrote that jurors in the October trial heard evidence that the trooper arrested the judge for a reason he knew was unlawful: because Wilder refused to participate in voluntary roadside sobriety tests.
The Colorado attorney general’s office, which is defending the trooper, vigorously disagrees with the jury and will appeal, said Kristin Hubbell, a spokeswoman for the office.
The case turns on defining probable cause, the standard to legally arrest someone.
Turner, who has been a trooper for about 10 years, did not return phone calls for comment.
However, Goodwin said the corporal is a fine officer and did not deviate from his training, which the State Patrol strongly supports.
“We have not made any changes to our training,” Goodwin said. “We believe in our training.”
In written briefs, the attorney general’s office said the trooper had enough proof to arrest because seven indicators of alcohol intoxication were present – things such as red and watery eyes, a flushed face and smell of alcohol.
However, Daniel, the federal judge, rejected that argument, saying Turner incorrectly assumed that because there was evidence that the indicators were present that this automatically meant there was probable cause to arrest. An arrest must be based on the “totality of the circumstances,” Daniel wrote.
It all began at 6:05 p.m. Nov. 30, 2001, when the judge was driving home. Turner later wrote in a report that he clocked Wilder’s blue Ford Probe going 57 mph in a 50 mph zone.
Wilder told the trooper he was passing a slow-moving car that suddenly speeded up. The trooper wrote in his report that he smelled alcohol and asked Wilder whether he had been drinking. Yes, Wilder said, he had a glass of wine at a hotel in Monte Vista.
The trooper asked Wilder to do a roadside sobriety test, which Wilder refused. He had undergone back surgery and was worried that he would hurt himself, he said. As Wilder fumbled in the dark for the insurance and registration cards, Turner refused him the courtesy of shining his flashlight into the car.
The trooper arrested Wilder and searched the car, in which he found a handgun that Wilder is licensed to carry. The tro0per took Wilder to a medical center to have blood drawn for a blood-alcohol test. The result was 0.014. At the time, the threshold for being legally drunk was 0.10.
Today the standard is 0.08.
Wilder said that if nothing else about his story is told, he wants one fact to stand out: “I never once told that officer I was a judge or a lawyer or anybody. I know people who will do that. I abhor that.”
The arrest, Wilder said, was embarrassing. People gossiped. The rumor was that the charges were dismissed because of Wilder’s position.
He filed a lawsuit and went to trial the first time in 2004, and lost. However, Wilder appealed and got a new trial, and this time he won.
As the million-dollar verdict was read in the courtroom last fall, Wilder sobbed.
He said all he wanted was to bring change to the State Patrol arrest procedures. He has offered to settle if the State Patrol changes how they train officers to ascertain probable cause before arresting suspected drunken drivers. Officers need to consider all evidence, he said, including that which would exonerate suspects.
Wilder, who had a serious heart attack in January and no longer drinks alcohol, said he doubts he’ll live to see the money. And frankly, he doesn’t care about receiving cash.
“I’m never going to be a prominent person,” he said. “I’m a small-town judge and a small-town lawyer. But I thought maybe I could do something good. Maybe I can make the world a little bit better place for the countless people who have no power at all.”
Staff writer Alicia Caldwell can be reached at 303-820-1930 or acaldwell@denverpost.com.
