welcome back to dateline. i m craig melvin. the prosecution had made their case, now it was the defense s turn. could they convince the jury to see justine winter s text messages in a different light? once again, keith morrison. every day in this montana courtroom the family of now 17-year-old justine winter dutifully shuffled to the front row seats directly behind the defense table. their faces, by their attorneys decree, they say, an intentional blank, emotionless. their apparent demeanor a spur in the hide of an already angry town. but almost no one knew what was really going on. justine s mother, mary, who had been struggling with alcohol, caved in to the stress. tell me how it s changed your life. i ran away for a while.
but there was another reason, too. justine suffered a brain injury in that crash so her recollection of the last few days leading up to the crash and that night itself here she doesn t remember. she is charged with a crime about which her memory is a complete blank. so, then, how could the jury know that justine knowingly crossed the center line, having decided to commit suicide by hitting the other car? a question we put to the prosecutor. in order to draw that conclusion, you have to read her mind essentially. you ve been a prosecutor for years. you know that car accidents happen in the most bizarre ways, that people do crazy things on the road. but you clearly said this was a situation in which i know what somebody was thinking when they drove across that lane of traffic and into that other car. no. i just don t know how you can know what she s thinking. i can t know what she was thinking. nobody knows what she was thinking at the time. she doesn t know what she was thinking a
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
justine s car, there right above the mark indicating 85 miles an hour found an orange mark. it s known as a slap mark, made, the experts testified, when the needle smashes against the console at high speed. and, finally, prosecutors revealed the reason, they said, behind it all. justine, like many 16-year-old girls, had a boyfriend. hers was named ryan. it was quite hot, this relationship. he was her world. but that day in march there had been a tiff. it had words. and so that night she drove ryan home, asked him to get out of the car, he said they were through. then justine drove north to clear her head. she was on her way home when, detectives testified, she began texting ryan. apparently while behind the wheel. the first text, half an hour before the crash. good-bye, ryan. just live your life knowing you did change me. my last words. i love you, ryan.
feel betrayed by it? you feel betrayed by the country you fought for? uh-huh. by the judicial part of the system. they took her, this once promising college bound honor student, to a cell in the women s prison where she instantly became the youngest inmate in the place. and two months later those attorneys, stoft and battle, who declined our requests for interviews, were off the case. that civil lawsuit was dropped. and that s when justine winter decided to tell us her side of the whole sad story. coming up an exclusive interview with justine. you say you probably caused that accident. are you able to say, i take responsibility for that? when dateline continues.