Jurors heard the voice of Sandra Jacobson for the first time Thursday, watching intently as a videotaped interview played on a big-screen television in which she denied drinking or using drugs the day her pickup and a taxi van collided in a crash that killed two Connecticut librarians.
In the tape, which was recorded a little more than four hours after the crash, Jacobson said she drank cold medicine before and after the wreck but denied that she was intoxicated.
“Never in my life have I ever done any of that (expletive),” Jacobson said in the interview. “I have a small NyQuil addiction, and it’s bad.”
The tape was played on the fourth day of Jacobson’s trial on vehicular homicide and other charges stemming from a Jan. 28, 2009, crash on Peña Boulevard that took the lives of Kate McClelland, 71, and Kathleen Krasniewicz, 54.
Prosecutors allege that Jacobson had a blood-alcohol level of 0.274 — more than three times the legal limit for intoxication — when she lost control of her Ford pickup, swerved across two lanes of traffic and clipped the taxi van, sending it into a fatal rollover.
After the collision, she drove to Denver International Airport, where she was planning to ship a dog to her brother in Texas.
Jacobson’s lead attorney, Charles Elliott, asserted in his opening statement that she was sober at the time of the crash but downed a bottle of Vitamin Water laced with banana schnapps after arriving at the airport. He also asserted that the taxi driver ran into her truck.
The video recording of Jacobson’s interview punctuated a day that saw her attorneys make an unsuccessful bid for a mistrial after a Denver police sergeant acknowledged that he made calculations about the deadly crash as recently as the previous day — information that was not provided ahead of time to the defense.
Sgt. Michael Farr also acknowledged under cross-examination by Elliott that he did not draft a new diagram of the accident scene — which includes a second set of tire marks not in the original accident report — until March 5. He also testified that he returned to the accident scene last month to measure the friction on the roadway — data needed to estimate the speed of Jacobson’s vehicle — and that he did not attempt to calculate the speed of the van until Wednesday.
Judge Robert McGahey Jr., however, denied the request for a mistrial.
“Whether I think that is incredibly sloppy investigating is a whole different issue,” he said after the jury was dismissed for lunch.
In the videotaped interview, Jacobson said that one of several dogs in the truck with her and her partner, Erin Simms, jumped over the seat trying to grab a Cheeto off the dashboard and that she briefly lost control of the truck.
“Holy (expletive),” she said in the interview. “I’m going like 70 miles an hour. I’m lucky I kept the (expletive) truck on the road. Erin’s screaming. . . . I had no idea anybody was hit. I honestly have no idea how I kept the truck on the road.”
She was in the right lane driving 70 mph, she told Detective Tilo Voitel.
“I don’t speed,” Jacobson said. “I literally am a good girl.”
And she said she had no idea another vehicle was nearby.
“All’s I know is I would never, ever hurt anyone in my life,” she said.
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