Justice Delayed

Tammy Crow, a synchronized swimmer, is one of America’s elite competitors. In December, she qualified for the U.S. Olympic team.

Almost a year ago, though, she was the driver in a one-car crash in which two people were killed, her longtime boyfriend and a 12-year-old boy.

Now she is at the center of a gathering storm. Her recently concluded court case raises fundamental questions about fairness, timing and equal treatment under the law -- and, as well, the nature of appropriate punishment and the privilege of representing this country as a member of the Olympic team. It’s a case with many hard questions. It’s a case, apparently, with no right answer.

“I am so, so sorry,” Crow said Tuesday night about what she later called “this awful accident.”

Crow was sentenced Jan. 23 to 90 days in the Tuolumne County jail after pleading no contest to two counts of misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter.

Crow had been drinking hours before the accident, which occurred near Yosemite National Park. Even so, there was no alcohol in her blood when she was tested and prosecutors said in court that it had played no role in the crash.

The judge who sentenced her -- like several others in the courtroom that day in the little town of Sonora -- was fighting tears. Nonetheless, the judge said, Crow had to do time, as a lesson to others. But the judge also said that Crow didn’t have to report to jail until October, after the Summer Olympics in Athens, which begin Aug. 13.

But is being an Olympic athlete so special that Crow should be allowed to swim in Athens before serving her jail time? If she hadn’t qualified for the U.S. team, would she get that kind of a break?

“I’ve heard [many] good excuses about why [defendants] should be able to extend their reporting date to jail and I’ve never seen it be nine months,” said the prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. James J. Newkirk, an 11-year veteran of the Tuolumne County D.A.’s office. “I’ve seen four months.”

Having qualified for the Games, does Crow still deserve to go? The U.S. Olympic Committee has, for the last few years, sought to review the qualifications of the athletes and coaches nominated for the Games by their various sports federations.

Under ordinary circumstances, Crow would be a lock. She turned 27 Tuesday. She attended the University of California and is, by all accounts, hard-working and bright.

But these circumstances are hardly ordinary -- not for Crow and not for the USOC, which only now is emerging from a year of turmoil sparked by an ethics-related inquiry involving a former chief executive.

USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said, “Tammy Crow is not yet officially a member of the U.S. Olympic team.”

An expedited review of her case by the USOC is expected.

In court, the father of 12-year-old Brett Slinger tearfully told Tuolumne County Judge Eleanor Provost, “Brett will never get his chance to be on the Olympic team.”

Mike Slinger also said, “We are left with a broken heart and any sentence you give her will never repay the living hell we are going through.”

Mike and Devon Slinger, who live in Danville, east of Oakland, declined to be interviewed for this story.

The crash occurred last Feb. 16 on an icy stretch of California 108. Crow was at the wheel of a black 2001 Nissan Pathfinder. Her boyfriend, Cody Tatro, 26, of Walnut Creek, was in the front passenger seat. Brett Slinger was sitting in back, on the left side of the vehicle.

Tatro taught at Brett Slinger’s school. Feb. 16, 2003, was a Sunday, the middle of the long President’s Day weekend. The Slingers had gone to the mountains to ski, but Brett had stayed in Danville on Saturday to play in a baseball game. Tatro had agreed to take him to the mountains that Sunday to meet his parents.

That Saturday night, according to an account of the Jan. 23 sentencing hearing in a Sonora newspaper, the Union Democrat, Crow said she’d been at a party. There is no transcript of the Jan. 23 court hearing, but a clerk in Judge Provost’s court said the newspaper account of the hearing was accurate.

Crow said she’d had three drinks at the party, a glass of wine, a martini and a tequila shot. She said in court that she’d gone to bed between 1:30 and 2 Sunday morning. Tatro got her up at 4:50 for the drive to the Sierras.

The crash occurred about 7:25 a.m. Sliding off the highway, the Pathfinder hit a “Slippery When Wet” sign by the sign of the road, then, spinning, slammed into two pine trees.

“It felt like the car was pushed out of my control,” Crow said.

Tatro was not wearing a seat belt. His head hit the steering column.

The door near Brett Slinger was pushed in two feet.

Crow broke her right arm and bones in her back.

The first policeman on the scene, CHP Officer Rick Thoma, said in a telephone interview that another driver in the area had been going 35 or 40 mph and, “He said she was ripping past him like he was standing still.”

Tests conducted at a Modesto hospital more than three hours after the crash found no alcohol in Crow’s blood.

Prosecutors filed two counts of vehicular manslaughter.

In mid-December, completing an arduous comeback, Crow made the U.S. team bound for Athens.

A few weeks later, on Jan. 5, in court in Sonora, Crow entered a no-contest plea to the two criminal charges.

At the Jan. 23 hearing, Crow told the judge, “Yes, I am on the Olympic team, but every day I think about [the accident] .... I am deeply sorry.”

On Tuesday, she said, “My heart is broken.”

Newkirk said he wanted a sentence of six months to a year. After listening to witnesses, Provost ordered a term of 90 days in jail. She also ordered Crow to pay $22,930 in restitution to Brett Slinger’s family for funeral and other expenses.

In putting off the date by which Crow had to report to jail until Oct. 25, Provost said, “I cannot punish you in any way that you haven’t already done, nor can I bring back Cody and Brett. There is no justice here. But unfortunately you have to serve as an example to others.”

The judge declined a request for an interview.

Thoma, the CHP officer, said, “While I was pretty satisfied with her sentence, it’s disappointing that the Olympic participation is a priority over the choices she made.

“The kid’s father, Mr. Slinger, said it pretty well: ‘My boy isn’t going to get the chance to try.’ Yet she made this mistake that cost him his life. And the world seems to revolve around the Olympics, not the consequences of her decisions.”

But, others contend, wouldn’t denying Crow the Games make the punishment undue? Aren’t there occasions when it’s appropriate for the criminal justice system to temper punishment with compassion and common sense?

In a letter supporting Crow, Tatro’s father and stepmother, Chip and Pam Tatro, wrote to the judge, “We ask that you consider how much more a person can be punished for what has happened.”

That letter also said, “Tammy has continued to work hard and to try to stay focused for her Olympic dream. She recently found out she is on the Olympic team. Please consider her future and understand that punishing her for an accident will never bring Brett and Cody back to us.”

Moreover, police and prosecutors didn’t bring a felony case. Felonies are more serious, such as arson and murder. Is a misdemeanor the sort of offense that ought to rule someone off the Olympic team?

Chris Carver, the 2004 U.S. synchronized swim team coach, wrote in another letter to the court that Crow would represent the United States at the Games “with the moral fiber that we desire in an exceptional athlete and a true American.”

Caroline Crow, Tammy’s mother, said that her daughter’s quest to make the Olympics began as a 7-year-old, when she watched synchronized swimming from the 1984 Los Angeles Games on television. There and then, Tammy Crow vowed, she would make it to the Olympics herself.

For the last eight years, Caroline Crow, 55, has been on kidney dialysis. She said she made ends meet as a medical transcriptionist. Her daughter, she said, worked her way through college, adding, “This is a goal-oriented kid. Since 1984, she had been working at the same thing.”

She sighed and said, “It’s been a year of thinking you had gotten through something -- and finding out there was something else left.”

Tammy Crow said, “Cody would never have wanted me to let go of this dream. I know he never would have accepted me giving it up.”

Said Chip Tatro, 54, a high school teacher near Rochester, N.Y.: “There’s no winners. It’s so sad. The only thing I can hope is the team wins the gold medal, then maybe there would be something for her.”