Thread: MN-Trial for suspect in bus crash starts Monday

Trial for suspect in bus crash starts Monday


By Gretchen Schlosser, West Central Tribune
Published Saturday, July 26, 2008

WILLMAR — The jury trial of the woman accused of causing the fatal Cottonwood school bus crash begins Monday in Willmar.

Ogla Marina Franco Del Cid, 24, of Minneota, faces four charges of criminal vehicular homicide for the Feb. 19 deaths of four Lakeview School students: Jesse Javens, 13; his brother, Hunter Javens, 9; Emilee Olson, 9; and Reed Stevens, 12.

Sixteen other children, ages 4 to 15, and another driver whose vehicle was struck by the bus, were injured in the crash. Franco faces 17 charges of criminal vehicular injury.



Emergency personnel respond to the scene Feb. 19 of a fatal bus crash at an intersection near Cottonwood. The bus tipped onto a pickup truck driven by James Hancock after being struck by a motorist facing 17 charges as a result of the collision. Hancock was traveling in the opposite lane on Minnesota Highway 23 toward Cottonwood. The trial for the suspect begins Monday in Willmar. Photo courtesy of the Marshall Independent
RELATED CONTENT
Article comments (5)
Collection: Cottonwood bus crash

According to court and state patrol documents, the bus was heading southbound on state Highway 23 around 3:45 p.m. Feb. 19 when it was struck by a minivan allegedly driven by Franco. The bus rolled onto its side in the roadway at the intersection with Lyon County Road 24, south of Cottonwood.

Franco, who is also known as Alianiss Nunes Morales, is also charged with a gross misdemeanor for giving a false name to a peace officer and misdemeanor charges for driving without a license and for not stopping at a stop sign.

District Judge David W. Peterson, who is chambered in Redwood County, ordered a change of venue for the trial, moving the Lyon County case to the Kandiyohi County Courthouse in Willmar. Peterson on Wednesday imposed a gag order on all parties in the case.

The judge denied a second change of venue motion July 8 that was filed by Franco’s attorneys, ordering that Kandiyohi County is the “preferred locationâ€

Oh how incredibly painful for the parents to have to live through this all over again. I wonder if they will go to the trail? I wonder if they will have to listen to every thing being translated to this woman and back.

I have sat in meetings like that -it is not fun. Once, at one nearly an hour in even the woman in question got sick of it and said, "I understand, you speak English now." Which they did.

In English, translated to Spanish, person responds in Spanish, response is then translated to English. And on and on. Once the person said simply 'Yes' and the translator said, 'Yes' in her accented English as well. Only amusing part of this.


I imagine there will be impact statements. My rage would know no bounds if this woman's choices to drive took away two of my children.

Sounds like the lawyers and the DNA airbag thing are planting reasonable doubt already...

Re: [quote]The judge denied a second change of venue motion July 8 that was filed by Franco’s attorneys, ordering that Kandiyohi County is the “preferred locationâ€

The weasels doing her defense did this: they argued for a change of location to a 'friendlier' (eg. more distant from the locality of the offense) location. Having successfully lobbied and gained such thing, then they got even greedier - they lobbied for the Minn-St.Paul area - signified by 'a more diverse jury pool, better facilities and more convenient location for defense counsel'. (To note - at least one of the attorneys Guerrero has office listed as a metro area Minneapolis location).

I don't think diversity has anything to do with it......try more illegal alien friendly.

Added to Home Page
http://www.alipac.us/article3393.html

Four jurors selected in Franco case
Gretchen Schlosser West Central Tribune
Published Monday, July 28, 2008

WILLMAR — As of noon Monday, four jurors have been selected in the trial of Olga Marina Franco Del Cid, 24, who is accused of causing the fatal Feb. 19 Cottonwood school bus crash.

Juror questioning began around 9 a.m. before Judge David W. Peterson at the Kandiyohi County Courthouse. Lyon County Attorney Rick Maes and defense attorney Manuel Guerrero have accepted all four of the potential jurors to come before the court. So far, three women and one man have been selected.

The judge and attorneys are questioning each potential juror individually, without other potential jurors present in the courtroom. Questions by the attorneys have included whether or not the potential jurors know anyone involved in the case or in law enforcement or emergency services, whether they have formed opinions from pre-trial media publicity or have the ability to weigh the evidence presented.

RELATED CONTENT
Collection: Cottonwood bus crash

July 26: Trial for suspect in bus crash starts Monday
Add a comment
Gretchen Schlosser Archive
Guerrero has questioned the jurors on whether or not his clients’ immigration status would impact his client’s guilt or innocence in the case. One of the allegations in the case is that Franco is in the country illegally and gave investigators a false name after the crash.

As each juror is accepted, Peterson has been instructing them that they will be called back to the courthouse for the actual trial, which he says will start later this week.

Franco faces four charges of criminal vehicular homicide for the Feb. 19 deaths of four Lakeview School students: Jesse Javens, 13; his brother, Hunter Javens, 9; Emilee Olson, 9; and Reed Stevens, 12. Sixteen other children, who ranged in age from 4 to 15 years old, and another driver whose vehicle was struck by the bus, were injured in the crash. Franco is accused of 17 charges of criminal vehicular injury.

According to court and State Patrol documents, the bus was southbound on state Highway 23 around 3:45 p.m. Feb. 19 when it was struck by a minivan allegedly driven by Franco. The bus rolled onto its side in the roadway. The crash happened at the intersection with Lyon County Road 24 just south of Cottonwood.

Franco, who is also known as Alianiss Nunes Morales, is also charged with a gross misdemeanor for giving a false name to a peace officer and misdemeanor charges for driving without a license and for not stopping at a stop sign.


Share your comments on this story
http://www.wctrib.com/articles/index.cf ... ction=News

Bus crash trial raises plenty of questions

In an instant, Olga Franco went from obscurity to a symbol of illegal immigration.

By PAM LOUWAGIE, Star Tribune

Last update: July 28, 2008 - 8:25 AM

In a February instant, Olga Franco went from obscurity to a symbol in the national debate over illegal immigration.

Today, the Guatemalan woman is scheduled to go on trial in the Cottonwood bus crash that left four children dead, more than a dozen injured and shocked the state. Her trial promises to give a prominent place to the same questions of race, language barriers and assimilation that have surrounded the case from its start.

Franco's defense turns on the idea that authorities and translators botched the initial interviews with her and that investigators operated on an incorrect premise that she was the driver.

Franco's attorneys argue it was her boyfriend behind the wheel and he fled the scene because he, too, was in the country illegally. He has not been seen since.

Seating a jury could turn largely on questions about attitudes toward Hispanics.

Judge David W. Peterson agreed to move the trial from Marshall to Willmar, but the defense had wanted the case moved to the Twin Cities. Willmar, which is located in Kandiyohi County, the county with the third-highest percentage of Hispanics in the state, has had its own periodic tensions between longtime residents and Hispanic immigrants.

Elizabeth Boyle, associate professor of sociology and law at the University of Minnesota, said that history could have unpredictable consequences.

"It seems like probably living in that circumstance, there's not going to be very many people who don't have some opinion about migration, one way or the other," Boyle said. "But that could actually be a good thing. That might mean that people are more informed."

Collision and confusion

The facts of the case seemed straightforward.

The 28 children aboard the Lakeview School bus were done for the day, heading home on a bitter cold afternoon. A van broadsided the bus, tipping it onto its side and into a pickup truck.

When emergency workers arrived, they found Franco alone in the van and extracted her from the vehicle.

At issue is what happened next.

The judge recently ordered prosecutors and the defense to not discuss the case further prior to trial, but documents and earlier interviews outlined the two sides' arguments.

Authorities say Franco, using an alias, told investigators through an interpreter that she was the driver. The interpreter said Franco maintained she was stopped at the stop sign and the bus "came onto her." Under questioning the next day, however, Franco said through a different interpreter that her boyfriend was driving the van, but fled the scene after the crash. Tests on the van's two front air bags later showed DNA from an unidentified man but none from Franco.

However, Lyon County Attorney Rick Maes told the Marshall Independent in April that he was unaware of "any information that would even remotely suggest" Franco was not the driver.

Once officials determined Franco's real name, they learned she was in the country illegally and didn't have a license.

She has been charged with four counts of criminal vehicular homicide in the deaths of Emilee Olson, 9, Reed Stevens, 12, Jesse Javens, 13 and Hunter Javens, 9. She also faces 17 counts of criminal vehicular injury, driving without a license, a stop sign violation and giving a false name and birth date.

She and her boyfriend, whom authorities have identified as Francisco Sangabriel-Mendoza, also face federal identity theft charges.

The accident led to public outcry across the state and country, as well as online.

Within a week, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., sent a letter to immigration officials asking why no action was taken when Franco, using an alias, was convicted in 2006 of driving without a license.

National groups favoring immigration enforcement, as well as those advocating for immigrants, took notice.

"Cases like this make the arguments very concrete. And so they provide a way to make your point, whatever your point might be," said Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the INS and now senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.

Question of bias

Minneapolis defense attorney Joe Friedberg said it could be difficult to seat a jury.

Many potential jurors would "assume she's illegal if they saw her in the street," Friedberg said. "I'd go in presuming that it's a bias the jury would have against her."

Willmar, the location for the trial, has its own history with immigrants.

A Hispanic police officer recruited from Texas in 1990 to help smooth relations with the city's Hispanic community sued the city in 1992, claiming he had been the victim of repeated discrimination. The city denied the charges, though it disciplined one officer for making a racist remark. The parties settled the suit, and the officer resigned.

In 1995, a Hispanic advocacy group claimed the city was slow to eliminate safety hazards at a trailer park where more than 90 percent of the 600 residents were Hispanic. Willmar officials blamed the park's owner.

Last April, tensions rose again when federal agents arrested 49 people during four days of raids at homes and workplaces on charges that they were in the country illegally.

After the Cottonwood crash, Latinos worried about a backlash against immigrants, said Naomi Mahler, pastor at Paz y Esperanza Lutheran Church in Willmar.

"I think in the Latino community, there's a sense that everyone was quick to judge and blame this woman," Mahler said. Some wonder if there would have been more willingness to withhold judgment had the van driver been white, she said.

Still mourning

For some of those who lost children or saw them injured, questions about how or why Franco came to be in Minnesota illegally are secondary to the simple question of whether she caused the accident.

And regardless of its outcome, their pain will still be there when the trial is over.

Emilee Olson's family was reminded again of their glaring loss when they gathered over the Fourth of July. The empty space left between her mother and grandmother in the group photo was where the energetic 9-year-old would have been.

Emilee wouldn't have wanted to be left out, said her aunt, Terri Hutchinson.

"It'll never be the same," Hutchinson said.

If Franco wasn't driving, Hutchinson said, she doesn't want her in prison. But she feels little sympathy for her.

"We feel like if she hadn't gotten here illegally and lied ... maybe this wouldn't have happened. But no one knows that," Hutchinson said.

Beulah Lavoie, a neighbor of another of the crash victims, Reed Stevens, treated him like a grandson. Stevens grew gladioluses in her garden last summer. She looks out at the flowers and thinks of him.

"It's kind of hard to cope with it," she said. She's choosing to focus on her memories of Reed, not Franco, she said.

"We just hope that justice will be done," Lavoie said. "And it'll be over."

Cases like this make the arguments very concrete. And so they provide a way to make your point, whatever your point might be," said Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the INS and now senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.

Question of bias

Minneapolis defense attorney Joe Friedberg said it could be difficult to seat a jury.

Many potential jurors would "assume she's illegal if they saw her in the street," Friedberg said. "I'd go in presuming that it's a bias the jury would have against her."

Willmar, the location for the trial, has its own history with immigrants.

A Hispanic police officer recruited from Texas in 1990 to help smooth relations with the city's Hispanic community sued the city in 1992, claiming he had been the victim of repeated discrimination. The city denied the charges, though it disciplined one officer for making a racist remark. The parties settled the suit, and the officer resigned.

In 1995, a Hispanic advocacy group claimed the city was slow to eliminate safety hazards at a trailer park where more than 90 percent of the 600 residents were Hispanic. Willmar officials blamed the park's owner.

Last April, tensions rose again when federal agents arrested 49 people during four days of raids at homes and workplaces on charges that they were in the country illegally.

After the Cottonwood crash, Latinos worried about a backlash against immigrants, said Naomi Mahler, pastor at Paz y Esperanza Lutheran Church in Willmar.

"I think in the Latino community, there's a sense that everyone was quick to judge and blame this woman," Mahler said. Some wonder if there would have been more willingness to withhold judgment had the van driver been white, she said.

Still mourning

For some of those who lost children or saw them injured, questions about how or why Franco came to be in Minnesota illegally are secondary to the simple question of whether she caused the accident.

And regardless of its outcome, their pain will still be there when the trial is over.

Emilee Olson's family was reminded again of their glaring loss when they gathered over the Fourth of July. The empty space left between her mother and grandmother in the group photo was where the energetic 9-year-old would have been.

Emilee wouldn't have wanted to be left out, said her aunt, Terri Hutchinson.

"It'll never be the same," Hutchinson said.

If Franco wasn't driving, Hutchinson said, she doesn't want her in prison. But she feels little sympathy for her.

"We feel like if she hadn't gotten here illegally and lied ... maybe this wouldn't have happened. But no one knows that," Hutchinson said.

Beulah Lavoie, a neighbor of another of the crash victims, Reed Stevens, treated him like a grandson. Stevens grew gladioluses in her garden last summer. She looks out at the flowers and thinks of him.

"It's kind of hard to cope with it," she said. She's choosing to focus on her memories of Reed, not Franco, she said.

"We just hope that justice will be done," Lavoie said. "And it'll be over."
Staff writer David Peterson contributed to this report. Pam Louwagie • 612-673-7102
http://www.startribune.com/local/25973244.html

Six jurors chosen for Cottonwood bus crash trial in Willmar

Jury selection continues today in the trial of a woman who was in the U.S. illegally and is accused of driving a van into the bus, killing four children and injuring more.

By PAM LOUWAGIE, Star Tribune

Last update: July 28, 2008 - 9:10 PM

[img]http://stmedia.startribune.com/images/195*260/Olga+Franco.jpg[/img]
Olga Franco


WILLMAR, MINN. -- A teacher, a retiree and a mother of six were among the first six jurors seated Monday in Kandiyohi County to hear evidence in the Cottonwood school bus crash case.

Defendant Olga Franco, 24, is accused of driving a van into the bus full of children in February, killing four students and injuring more than a dozen others.

A dozen potential jurors were questioned Monday in a process that began more smoothly than some legal observers had anticipated. Most jurors, under individual questioning from the judge and attorneys, said they could set aside information they'd heard about the crash and their feelings about illegal immigrants so that they could fairly judge the case.

Jury selection is scheduled to resume today, with opening statements anticipated later this week. The court will seat 12 jurors and two or three alternates.

A pool of 100 potential jurors filled out written questionnaires before Monday, and 25 were dismissed based on their answers. The questionnaires have not been released. The six jurors seated so far are four women and two men.

The highly publicized case against Franco, who was in the country illegally from Guatemala, has raised debate about immigration policy and issues of race and language.

Judge David W. Peterson agreed to move the trial to Willmar from Marshall to ensure a fair jury, but the defense wanted the case moved to the Twin Cities. Willmar and surrounding Kandiyohi County have been the site of periodic racial tensions.

After initial questions from Peterson on Monday about pretrial publicity, attorneys questioned each potential juror at length, touching on subjects such as experience with the legal system, hobbies and television shows such as "CSI."

Franco is charged with four counts of criminal vehicular homicide, 17 counts of criminal vehicular injury, driving without a license, running a stop sign and giving authorities a false name and birth date.
http://tinyurl.com/6h24dw