Bishop Convicted of Leaving the Scene of Deadly Crash

A jury on Tuesday convicted Bishop Thomas J. O’Brien of leaving the scene of an accident after he killed a jaywalker in June. The 68-year-old bishop, who resigned as head of the Phoenix diocese after the incident, faces up to 3 3/4 years in prison.

After the verdict was read, O’Brien sat slumped in his seat, staring at the floor for 30 minutes without moving. His family cried quietly in the rows behind him. “We’re devastated,” said Jeanne Dearing, O’Brien’s sister. “He’s innocent.”

The jury deliberated nearly seven hours over two days before reaching its decision. Speaking after court adjourned Tuesday, jurors said that the bishop probably didn’t know he hit had someone with his car that night, but that he should have stopped to find out. O’Brien told police he thought he struck an animal or a rock.

“We focused mostly on whether a reasonable person should have stopped, given the nature of the accident,” said juror Kay Lapid.

Sentencing is likely within two months, and O’Brien remains free on $45,000 bond.

Maricopa County Atty. Richard M. Romley said Tuesday that the conviction was a victory, although a tragic one.

“It’s a sad day,” he said. “We had to put a bishop on trial for killing a man and failing to stop. But what this says is that no one is above the law, no matter what your status in life is.”

Before sentencing, Romley said he would give Judge Stephen A. Gerst additional evidence showing that “the bishop has not been forthcoming in other matters.”

Two weeks before the accident, O’Brien headed off obstruction-of-justice charges by signing an immunity deal with Romley, in which he admitted having protected priests accused of child molestation.

The Phoenix diocese expressed sympathy after the verdict, for both O’Brien and the family of the victim, 43-year-old Jim Reed. “This has been a long and difficult process for everyone involved, and I am grateful that it is over,” said Bishop Thomas J. Olmstead, head of the Roman Catholic diocese. O’Brien “is our brother in Christ, and we shall continue to be one with him in prayer as we await sentencing.”

He said it will be up to Pope John Paul II to decide whether O’Brien will retain his title as bishop.

Reed’s family, members of the Navajo Nation, has said little since the trial began more than a month ago. “The family is happy and relieved, but they realize it’s not over yet,” said Robert Ramirez, their attorney. “We have a long way to go” before sentencing.

Throughout the trial, prosecutors zeroed in on O’Brien’s behavior in the 36 hours after the accident. They said that he refused to answer the door when police came looking for him, that he parked his car so no one would see the damaged windshield and that he was oddly uninterested in what he hit. This was a man, they said, who called police twice when someone vandalized his outdoor lights but kept silent after a major accident.

The defense maintained that O’Brien never knew he hit the 6-foot-2, 238-pound Reed, and that he had no legal obligation to stop.

But the jury said it focused almost entirely on the moments before and after the accident. O’Brien’s car was going 40 mph on Glendale Avenue about 8:30 p.m. when it hit Reed. He was walking in the median strip and was intoxicated at the time.

“We cut it all down to 10 seconds,” said juror Richard Blalock. “We only cared about what he did at the time of the accident.”

And the key evidence was the smashed windshield.

“We focused on facts, and the windshield was a fact,” said Erik Mikkelsen. “It had significant damage, and that didn’t happen by a little bird flying into it.”

Given the extent of the damage, the jurors said, they concluded that O’Brien should have stopped.

They said they had the “utmost” respect for the bishop, who sometimes came off as remote and cold during the trial.

“Because I am close to his age, it affected me dramatically,” said juror Lois Yabu. “We certainly all had compassion for him.”

Although O’Brien’s family had little to say Tuesday, some of his supporters expressed outrage at the verdict.

“The victim walked into the middle of the street highly intoxicated; if it hadn’t been the bishop’s car, it would have been another car,” said 66-year-old Mary Anne McKone, who has known O’Brien for more than 20 years. “He’s suffered enough.... He’s one of the nicest men I know, and he doesn’t lie, he doesn’t lie.”