Grossman had been out on a 2 million dollar bond. I’m pleasantly surprised her high dollar attorney’s didn’t get her off. Her Mercedes black box evidence and witnesses were compelling. It was a hit and run but the Mercedes accident sensor shut the car down a few blocks past the accident.
Grossman will certainly appeal and drag this out another few years.
Link GUILTY: Verdict returned in trial of socialite accused of murder of two Westlake Village boys in hit and run | KCLU
Jesus Christ, although technically not explicit, that photograph is horrific given the story. If the only impact that caused the damage to the front of that Mercedes was two little boys they must have been utterly destroyed. I think that can’t be possible, right? There must have been some subsequent collision too.
Too be fair… the BAC in California is .08. Grossman barely met it.
However, racing another car in a residential neighborhood and hit and run are contributing factors.
Running down 2 kids and driving off is inexcusable.
Link What is the legal "BAC limit" for drivers in California?
She was going almost 80mph at impact.
The mother grabbed one child and jumped out of the way. There could have been 4 fatalities.
I mean, I sort of applaud your effort to try to extract some objectivity rather than sheer anger and outrage here, but what else “contributed” to their deaths?
Technically her alcohol level, under California law.
It varies from state to state. .08 used to be legal in a lot of states. I google several states and they all reported .08 as the current BAC limit. It’s even lower for drivers with a commercial license.
I gave up a beer with my pizza 25 years ago. I only drink at home now. I never drove after several drinks.
DWI limits are very strict now, and it saves lives.
Oh okay, maybe I see what you’re saying. But I don’t see how the verdict should have been anything other than murder even if she had been soberly racing her boyfriend at 80mph. Is there a legal argument in that jurisdiction that the alcohol factor makes the difference between manslaughter and murder?
I don’t really know what pushes a vehicular accident from manslaughter to murder.
I think if your driving the speed limit and stop after the accident, it’s possibly manslaughter?
Speeding or DUI changes the charge?
Grossman had 4 factors against her, 2 deaths, racing on public streets, DUI, and hit & run. Made the jury’s decision easy.
This is just disgusting. The accident happened in 2020 and it took until now.
The defense claimed that the she was “only” driving 52 mph and that it was her boyfriend who hit the kids and then the kids flew up and hit her car which isn’t possible.
And I assume she has been free on bail. At least the judge has now put her in custody.
This is a much more complete article
In my state you would have to fail a sobriety test before you are subjected to a chemical test.
This and then some. I’d say it was the only factor. Any other factor is just a follow-on.
The defense strategy seems to have been, maybe the boyfriend hit the kids with his car. And apparently the police botched the investigation enough that prosecutors had trouble disproving this in court.
On a separate note, to convict for second-degree murder in California the prosecution had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt:
~Max
She had a history of driving too fast and bragging about it on social media.
Some key facts from that more extensive article.
Grossman, Castro [prosecutor] said, showed conscious disregard for human life and knew her speed could be dangerous on a suburban street with pedestrian traffic because police had warned her of the dangers in the past… "She had a history of speeding. She’d texted about it,” Castro said. “She acted with disregard for human life.”
Prosecutors also alleged that Grossman traveled a third of a mile after slamming into the children before safety features in her car automatically shut it down.
So she didn’t ever stop voluntarily.
Jacob was found near the curb about 50 feet from the crosswalk. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead a few hours later. Mark’s body was found 254 feet away.
Prosecutors accused Grossman of reaching 81 mph before lightly braking and hitting the brothers at 73 mph, based on the car’s data recorder and the distance Mark was found from the crosswalk. But Buzbee [defense] called in experts who testified that the data weren’t reliable and that Grossman was traveling at 52 mph based on a video captured seconds after the collision.
The daughter’s tears are misplaced.
If there’s any injustice here is not that her mother is being punished too harshly, it’s that the guy who she was racing who only managed not to kill people through dumb luck isn’t also getting a harsh punishment.
Theyr’e not misplaced, Rebecca Grossman didn’t just hurt the Iskander family her actions ended up hurting the people she loved as well. If someone I loved was sent to prison for a long, long time, even if I thought they deserved it, I’d probably cry too.
I don’t know anything about this case and haven’t read the articles yet, but how can there be any doubt about whether the boyfriend’s car hit the kids? If it did, it would have obvious damage like her car does, right?
As I said, police botched the investigation. They didn’t inspect boyfriend’s car, apparently. ETA: retracted unless I can find the article where I read that. But there was some sort of issue with the breathalyzer test.
~Max
never mind, what I wrote didn’t make any sense
It seems the defense raised this theory without calling the boyfriend as a witness or introducing evidence of the boyfriend’s car. Prosecutors likely had no notice that this was the defense strategy going into the trial and so probably weren’t prepared with evidence of boyfriend’s car.
Defense attorneys may have forced police to admit they did not question boyfriend or examine his car on the night of the accident, and left it at that. Note, their strategy failed.
Anyways if you really want to read the defense case you can visit their propaganda site.
~Max
I just skimmed that and had to back out of it. Absolutely disgusting.