A motorist who was already acquitted of killing a bicyclist on Atlantic Avenue back in 2010 was let go without any consequences following an appeal.
Krystal Francis was never found guilty for killing Flatbush resident Jasmine Heron after police said she clipped the cyclist with her car door — sending the young woman into the path of a city bus.
Francis was convicted of driving with a suspended license following a brief trial in February, but even that charge was dismissed when she appealed the verdict last week.
Judge Guy Mangano threw out the conviction after it was made clear that Francis did not know that her license had been suspended.
“While I’m aware of the tragedy involved in this case, the law is the law,” Mangano said in his decision, which was first reported by the Daily News. “I’m not in a position to change the law. I have to follow the law.”
Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes had to prove that Francis had received proper notice that her license expired before she got behind the wheel, but couldn’t. One can only be convicted of driving with a suspended license if the driver knows that she is breaking the law, Francis’s attorneys claimed.
Mangano agreed.
“There was no proof offered whatsoever concerning an essential element of the crime,” the judge ruled.
Heron’s mother was stunned by the reversal.
“I cannot understand how a judge can change the verdict of 12 jurors,” Wendy Clouse told the Daily News through her lawyer Bernard Chambers. “This girl did something illegal that led to my daughter’s death.”
Cop arrested for violating badge
Investigators arrested a cop who they claim accessed NYPD computer records for a convicted drug dealer.
Federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Officer Devon Daniels on May 15, who Drug Enforcement Agency detectives say ran license plate numbers for a heroin ring based in Jamaica, Queens. Investigators learned about Daniels’s involvement in the crew through federal wire taps.
Prosecutors claim that the 30-year-old officer, who is based out of the 111th Precinct in Queens, gained access to the information from a computer in his squad car between April 2010 and April 2011, where he ran license plates and checked the status of warrants while using his password and that of his partner without his partner’s knowledge.
Investigators also recorded him talking to Guy Curtis, the drug dealer they were targeting. In the wire taps, Daniels allegedly asks Curtis for money, “any working revolver,” and permission to borrow one of the drug dealer’s vehicles, prosecutors claim.
Daniels was not officially charged and was released on $150,000 bond. He would not speak to reporters as he left the courtroom.
Reach Deputy Editor Thomas Tracy at ttracy@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-2525.
