wrong. he said your family was in an accident. and my world just dropped down from underneath me. the scene told the story why did you find? something i don t want to see again. yuck a deadly crash on a dark road. two gone, one barely alive. to a tragic accident. but look closer. can all of the broken glass and twisted metal, was there a clue to a crime? the last thing i wanted to have was to have to take a double fatality and not treat it as a homicide. murder. and no one saw coming. two families in torment. i couldn t deal with it. we were both just a small town trial with big emotions. you took it. you did it. and the verdict that would shake them all. hello, and welcome to dateline. a dangerous highway in big sky country. that was a setting for a deadly crash that would seem to unite to families in shock and heartbreak. except they were about to find out that the truth about what. . ,. happened on that fateful night might b
attorney ed corrigan saw them, we ll, give him no choice, he said. he charged her with deliberately homicide. montana s equivalent of murder. justine purposely went into the wrong way to traffic and smashed head on into another car. by doing so she should have known her actions would ve killed somebody and under those circumstances i think deliberately homicide was a legitimate charge. you decide to charge president, why? she was 16. she was. the taking of two lives is not in my opinion a delinquent act. it is a crime, it easily prosecuted as a crime. if convicted it needs to be on her record for the rest of her life. perhaps because of her own massive injuries and continuing operations, her age. justine, after pleading not guilty, was released to house arrest, and fitted with an ankle bracelet. she was allowed to attend classes a glacier high. at home her parents fumed. no matter what those text
A loophole in state law means a southern Indiana man, who now is over the age of 21, cannot be prosecuted in any court for allegedly molesting a 10-year-old child
crime? that s what was portrayed. but the actual intent was not that. at all. all rise. district court is now in session. misunderstood or not, by the time justine winter s trial for deliberate homicide started in january 2011, the tide of public opinion had turned as bitter as a montana winter. the hearts of erin thompson s family, too, had toughened. and justine, who showed up in an almost childlike polka dot hair band certainly didn t look like the part of an accused killer facing 200 years behind bars. but there she was. with the two families just a few feet away, she watched investigators testify to a certainty that it was justine s pontiac grand am that crossed the center line. here you can see all the debris from the initial impact of the crash. slamming into erin s subaru so hard it was driven backward into the highway barrier. and crash reconstructionists
the taking of two lives is not, in my opinion, a delinquent act. it is a crime, needs to be prosecuted as a crime, and if convicted needs to be on her record for the rest of her life. perhaps because of her own massive injuries, her continuing operations, her age, justine after pleading not guilty was released to house arrest, fitted with an ankle bracelet to await trial. shechls allowed to attend school. at home, her parents fumed. whatever the text messages said, the idea justine would cause that crash on purpose, just crazy. are you angry at all of this? it builds up inside, and it gets to a point where you can t take it anymore. turned out and it was frankly hardly surprising in a town the size of kalispell the two families actually knew each other. justine s mother and erin s mother had worked at the same school. erin s family made it perfectly clear what they wanted from justine is a heartfelt apology and that she