Third Trial Convicts Driver

We first wrote about Gordon House one year after the Christmas Eve, 1992, traffic accident in which House, driving the wrong way on Interstate 40 near Albuquerque, N.M., slammed head-on into a car carrying a family of five.

Melanie Cravens and her three young daughters died. Police said House--who ran a substance-abuse program for Navajo teen-agers--had been drinking and was well over the legal limit.

For many in New Mexico, which has one of the nation’s highest rates of alcohol-related traffic deaths, this was the final straw. The legislature enacted sweeping changes in the drunk-driving laws as Cravens’ mother, Nadine Milford, became an advocate for reform.

Last week, after House’s third trial in 12 months on charges of vehicular homicide and related offenses, a jury in Las Cruces, N.M., found him guilty on all counts.

The verdict culminated a case that had been fraught with controversy. Prosecutors first charged House with “depraved mind” first-degree murder, which a judge dismissed as not applicable in a drunk-driving accident. House’s lawyer, Ray Twohig, claimed that his client had been made a scapegoat--a victim of the “drunken Indian” stereotype.

At his first trial in June, 1994--moved to Taos due to publicity--House acknowledged that he’d been drinking, but said his wrong-way driving was due to a blinding migraine headache. The jury convicted him of drunk driving, but deadlocked 9-3 in favor of conviction on all other counts.

House was tried again in Taos in November before a new judge. The jury again deadlocked 9-3.

The case was transferred to yet a third judge, who granted the state’s bid to move the case to Las Cruces, a more conservative southern New Mexico city.

This time the trial was carried on the Court TV cable channel, which intercut it with coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial. Although House again took the stand (backed by witnesses who attested to his history of migraines), last week the jury convicted him. He faces sentencing next month. Twohig says he plans to appeal.