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State v. Colligan

Jury Rejects Claim That Man Was Negligent

BYLINE: Val Ellicott, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
DATE: 03-07-1995
PUBLICATION: The Palm Beach Post
EDITION: SECTION: Newspapers_&_Newswires
PAGE: 1B

A man accused of criminal recklessness for taking his stepson on a fatal go-cart ride was acquitted of manslaughter Monday.

John Colligan, who testified that the possibility of an accident ``never entered my mind'' when he wedged himself and 5-year-old Steven Colligan into the go-cart, wept after the verdict was read.

``I don't feel any differently about what happened (the accident), but I'm glad to be free,'' Colligan said outside the courtroom.

The verdict - not guilty of manslaughter by culpable negligence - also triggered an outpouring of emotion from Colligan's family and friends. One man threw his head back and gasped with relief, then glared in angry triumph at the prosecution table and made an obscene gesture at prosecutors Ellen Roberts and Pam Browne.

Roberts had blamed the accident on Colligan's ``outrageous'' disregard for his own condition - she said he had been drinking beer the day of the crash and was legally impaired - and for the condition of the go-cart.

``You saw the go-cart, you saw what a piece of junk it was,'' she told jurors in closing arguments.

But jurors, who took two hours to reach the verdict, were not convinced Colligan knew the go-cart had bad brakes, a faulty throttle and missing wheel bearings.

``There was a lot of conflicting testimony between the two sides and we just felt the state did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was guilty of culpable negligence,'' juror Harvey Siebert said Monday.

Steven Colligan was killed Sept. 5, 1993, when the go-cart careered into the back of a parked truck, throwing the boy head-first into the truck's bumper.

In tearful testimony Monday, Colligan, 46, said the go-cart struck a bottle as he and his stepson rounded a curve in the road of their suburban West Palm Beach neighborhood. He said he had consumed less than two beers over five hours before the crash and had no idea the go-cart was defective.

``I saw it (the bottle) just for a second,'' he said. ``I hit it, and now that go-cart was heading right for that truck. There's nothing I can do. It won't stop and it won't turn.''

Defense attorneys Chris Haddad and Jerry Sessions portrayed Colligan as a loving stepfather who agreed to take Steven for a ride only after the boy pestered him repeatedly.

``When he sat in that go-cart and put his son between his legs, he did so for one reason - because he loved his son, not because he's a criminal,'' Haddad told jurors.

Colligan's family and neighbors barely controlled their resentment for the aggressive prosecution during the four-day trial. On Monday, Circuit Judge Virginia Gay Broome jailed Johnny Melvin, who owned the go-cart, for several hours after Melvin muttered an obscenity in response to Roberts' repeated description of the cart as ``junk.''

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