‘Any Reasonable Driver’ Would Have Stopped, Prosecutor Says

Looking frail and distant, Bishop Thomas J. O’Brien listened Wednesday as prosecutors told jurors that he fatally struck a man with his car in June, then sped off as if nothing happened.

“This is an enormous collision,” said prosecutor Anthony Novitsky, summing up his case against O’Brien in final arguments Wednesday. “Any reasonable driver who has this happen, who has their windshield exploding, would put their foot on the brake. He doesn’t do that.”

The defense argued that O’Brien thought he had hit a rock or an animal, not a person, so he had no legal responsibility to stop.

After more than a month of testimony, the hit-and-run trial of the 68-year-old former head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix is expected to head to the jury today. The state has finished its case and the defense is expected to close its arguments this morning. If convicted on charges of leaving the scene of a fatal accident, O’Brien could be sentenced to up to three years and nine months in prison.

On June 14, O’Brien was driving on Glendale Avenue in Phoenix when Jim Reed was walking in the middle of the road. O’Brien’s car was traveling about 40 mph when it hit the 43-year-old Reed, sending him crashing into the windshield, authorities said. The driver of a car behind O’Brien’s auto wrote down his plate number, leading to his arrest a few days later.

Reed, who the defense claimed was jaywalking and intoxicated, was then hit by a second car and dragged 67 feet. That car didn’t stop either and the driver has not been found. The victim, who suffered a skull fracture and broken legs, was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Neither side disputes that O’Brien hit Reed; the question is whether he knew it at the time.

Prosecutors said that after the accident, O’Brien went home and didn’t tell anyone what happened.

The next day, when he visited his sister in nearby Scottsdale, they said, he parked his car with the badly damaged window out of view. When another priest told him that the police were looking for him, he said he would take care of it but never called law officers to volunteer any information.

When officers knocked at his door, he was home but didn’t answer. He later said he thought the plainclothes police were members of the news media. The bishop also refused to take any phone calls.

“Why in the universe of possibilities would he exclude the possibility that he hit a pedestrian?” Novitsky asked. “Why does it never enter his mind? He makes no police report, he tells no one. There are a whole lot of ways to be deceptive, and one way is acting innocent.”

Defense lawyer Tom Henze presented part of his closing arguments, saying prosecutors were portraying his client as heartless.

“The state is telling you Bishop Thomas O’Brien is a liar. They are telling you he ran over a man and left him there to die,” he told jurors. “He didn’t call police because he didn’t have their names or numbers. He was avoiding people because he wanted to be alone. The state doesn’t want to tell you that because that would make Bishop O’Brien look human.”

The crash happened just two weeks after the bishop signed an immunity deal with prosecutors that spared him an indict- ment on obstruction-of-justice charges for protecting priests accused of molesting children. In exchange, he admitted covering up for alleged abusers.

After the accident, O’Brien resigned as head of the 480,000-member diocese, a position he had held for 21 years.

The bishop surprised took the stand this week, speaking for the first time since the accident.

He gave flat, unemotional answers, sometimes contradicting what he told police.

O’Brien said he “chose not to stop” after the accident despite the massive damage to the windshield.

When he got home, he said he went inside and ate some cold pizza.

Henze said the law requires someone to stop in such a situation only if they reasonably believe they hit another person.

“He heard a loud noise and saw the windshield damage,” the lawyer said. “He didn’t brake, he looked around and didn’t see anyone and he kept going.”