Defense says woman was drugged, raped before killing man in '99 crash

08:33 AM CDT on Thursday, April 20, 2006

By ARNOLD HAMILTON / The Dallas Morning News

McLOUD, Okla. – Emily Dowdy says she has no memory of how her nightmare began: how she ended up behind the wheel of her car and plowed head-on into another vehicle, snuffing the life of a 20-year-old college student.

She knows what prosecutors portrayed: a remorseless partier so drunk she barreled the wrong direction down an interstate in the dead of night in May 1999.

RICHARD MICHAEL PRUITT / DMN

Emily Dowdy, imprisoned in McLoud, Okla., broke her neck in the 1999 accident that claimed the life of Ryan Brewer. Prosecutors and Mr. Brewer's family believe she was nothing more than a drunken driver, not a victim.

And she knows what jurors concluded: She deserved 40 years behind the towering chain-link fence and rolling razor wire of a state prison in this rural central Oklahoma town.

But two experts hired by Ms. Dowdy's defense team believe something even more sinister happened: They are convinced that the native Texan was drugged at a disco, sexually assaulted and dumped into her driver's seat, leading to the crash that broke her neck and claimed the life of Ryan Brewer.

Then, her supporters say, she may have fallen victim to overzealous prosecutors who tried her three times – the third resulting in an especially stiff sentence – perhaps because Mr. Brewer was the son of a police captain.

"The tragedy is they [Mr. Brewer's family] have suffered a horrible loss, Emily Dowdy is permanently disabled, and the person who is ultimately responsible for this is still out there and has very likely done this to other women," said Dr. Deborah Zvocek, a Minneapolis-based medical anthropologist.

Neither prosecutors nor Mr. Brewer's family are buying claims that Ms. Dowdy was anything other than a drunken driver.

Ryan Brewer

"She claims no memory of the events," said Mr. Brewer's father, Capt. David Brewer, a 25-year police veteran. "That would be the best thing to claim. That way you don't have to tell stories and risk getting them mixed up."

Responding to critics who depicted the prosecution as unrelenting, Connie Smothermon, a former assistant district attorney who handled the case, said she and colleague Christy Miller prosecuted the matter as they would any other: aggressively.

"It amazes me," she said, "that anyone would think a police officer's family is entitled to less justice than anyone else."

Ms. Dowdy's family and friends refuse to give up hope that the full story of that night somehow can be unearthed: Her parents, Charlie and Nancy Jackson, both 62, have spent more than $120,000 of their own money – including cashing in their retirement accounts and mortgaging three times the building that houses their Hillsboro insurance agency – in defending their daughter, now 32. Friends have contributed thousands more to a defense fund.

Ms. Dowdy's first trial ended in a mistrial, the second in a conviction overturned on appeal and the third in the penalty she is serving.

But the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals recently ordered a review of complaints that her trial counsel, John Coyle, failed not only to investigate similar incidents of involuntary intoxication but also to rebut damning testimony that cast her as a party girl.

In a four-day hearing last month, Mr. Coyle called it "the most unfair trial I've been involved in my 31 years as a lawyer."

A high-profile attorney who briefly represented Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, Mr. Coyle blamed himself for failing to prepare adequately and fight back at key moments in the trial. He also testified that he felt "bullied and intimidated" by the trial judge – Susan Caswell, who is married to an Oklahoma City police officer.

In response, prosecutors sought to portray Mr. Coyle's remorse as nothing more than typical, post-trial second-guessing – hardly reversible error.

Both Mr. Coyle and Ms. Dowdy's appellate lawyer, Mark Henricksen, sought unsuccessfully to move the case out of Judge Caswell's court. After presiding over the recent hearing, she now will advise the appeals court whether she thinks the conviction and sentence should be overturned. The appeals court then has the ultimate say. No decision is expected for at least several weeks.

A Fort Worth native, Ms. Dowdy grew up in Hillsboro. She enrolled at the University of Oklahoma in 1997 to pursue a degree in architecture.

By May 1999, as the spring semester neared an end, Ms. Dowdy was preparing to spend the summer as director of a Presbyterian youth camp in Texas. She and a friend decided to go dancing at a disco in northwest Oklahoma City.

RICHARD MICHAEL PRUITT / DMN

Emily Dowdy's parents, Charlie and Nancy Jackson, say their daughter was twice a victim: first of a rapist the night of the fatal crash, then of a corrupt criminal justice system.

They hadn't been at the Crosswinds club long when Ms. Dowdy's friend became violently ill. She was later arrested and taken to a detox center. Ms. Dowdy had three drinks, she said, but remembers nothing else – until she woke up in the hospital.

"A curtain comes down," the reed-thin Ms. Dowdy said during an interview at Mabel Bassett Correctional Center, about 40 minutes east of downtown Oklahoma City. "There are hours from that night lost completely, gone."

She later learned she was involved in a fatal car crash more than 20 miles from where her night out began and where her memory vanished. Her neck was broken. She required multiple surgeries and extensive therapy.

Her right shoulder was all but destroyed. She uses her left hand to help raise her right, so she can shake hands – or swear to tell the truth in court. At 5-foot-8, she weighs about 100 pounds – down about 40 from the night of the accident.

"This young man lost his life," she said. "I have lost a part of myself."

Ms. Dowdy's family and lawyers are especially haunted by what they view as an excessive prison sentence for a first-time offender. They are convinced rogue prosecutors – in concert with a sympathetic judge – engineered frontier-style justice to avenge a victim they considered part of their law enforcement family.

One example: One witness testified he saw a Tulsa World photo showing Ms. Dowdy at the December 2000 Big 12 football championship game, holding a beer – a violation of her bond restrictions.

Ms. Miller, the former assistant district attorney who helped prosecute the case, acknowledged at last month's hearing that she's never seen such a photo: "I didn't have it. I've never had it."

Judge Caswell said: "I don't know if it exists or not. I rely on you lawyers to tell me."

"This is outrageous," said Mr. Henricksen, who asserted that the only published photo of Ms. Dowdy at the game appeared in the Sunday Oklahoman newspaper. It showed Ms. Dowdy and her then-boyfriend at a tailgate party, both holding hot dogs, not beers.

"There is no Tulsa World photograph," he told the court – a fact, he said, "known to the prosecution for two years."

Defense attorneys – and Ms. Dowdy's family – believe the questionable testimony near the trial's end painted Ms. Dowdy as an unrepentant partier and inflamed jurors, who then hammered her with a stiffer sentence than the 30 years that prosecutors requested.

Andrew M. Coats, dean of the University of Oklahoma College of Law, said he was surprised at the severity of Ms. Dowdy's punishment: "That is certainly a very stout sentence. Obviously, it's a terrible situation."

Mr. Coats, a former chief Oklahoma County district attorney, said the sentence is not unprecedented, noting that the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals upheld a 90-year sentence in a similar 1969 case and a 50-year sentence in a similar 1951 case.

As the Oklahoma courts again sort out the case, two families – one in Texas, the other in Oklahoma – are left waiting, bound by a tragedy they may never escape.

The Jacksons face the possibility that they may not live long enough to see their only daughter free again. The Brewers live with the anguish that they may face a fourth trial of the woman they hold responsible for their son's death.

The two fathers have talked at length on the telephone. They even embraced in the courtroom. But they've reached a point where it's apparent they'll have to agree to disagree.

As much as anything, it's a culture clash: The Brewers are devout members of the Church of Christ. They don't drink alcohol.

"They've told us they're a Christian family and have Christian values," Capt. Brewer said. "Our family, obviously we look at Christianity a little differently."

The Jacksons attend a Presbyterian church. Mrs. Jackson said she sees nothing wrong with going to a dance club. She acknowledged that she and her daughter drank a glass of wine at a hotel happy hour after a long day at the courthouse before the third trial opened.

"It did not cross our minds," she said of bond restrictions that prohibited her daughter from consuming alcohol.

They also didn't hide it. Ms. Dowdy admitted in a letter and testimony that she occasionally drank while out on bond.

"The thing that most torments me is that after she got out of the hospital and was allowed to return to OU, she continued to party," Capt. Brewer said. "That kind of mind-set to us kind of says killing Ryan was meaningless to her."

The toll of the fatal accident and seven years of legal proceedings is evident on both families.

"Charlie looked in the mirror last night and said, 'Man, I've aged, and so have you,' " Mrs. Jackson said. "I was so naive when this all began. I thought you were innocent until proven guilty. I never in my wildest dreams thought we'd face what we faced and what Emily faced."

E-mail ahamilton@dallasnews.com

May 22, 1999: Emily Dowdy and another University of Oklahoma student go to the Crosswinds club, an Oklahoma City disco, around 11 p.m.

May 23, pre-dawn: Ms. Dowdy is seen driving the wrong direction on Interstate 240 in far southeast Oklahoma City – more than 20 miles from the Crosswinds club. She crashes head-on into a vehicle driven by Ryan Brewer, a 20-year-old Oklahoma Christian University student. He is killed immediately, and she is rushed to the hospital with a broken neck.

Aug. 28, 2000: Ms. Dowdy's first-degree manslaughter trial begins in Oklahoma County District Court.

Aug. 30: State District Judge Ray Elliott declares a mistrial because of improper contact he had with an Oklahoma City police officer. He suggests that a state prosecutor may have deliberately sent the police officer to the judge's chambers to create the improper contact.

Jan. 8, 2001: Ms. Dowdy's second trial begins. She is convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

May 31, 2002: The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals overturns the conviction and sentence, ruling that Judge Susan Caswell incorrectly blocked Ms. Dowdy's lawyers from presenting an involuntary intoxication defense.

March 29, 2004: Ms. Dowdy's third trial opens. She is convicted again and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Feb. 14, 2006: The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals orders Judge Caswell to conduct a hearing into Ms. Dowdy's claims of ineffective assistance of counsel.

March 21: A four-day hearing begins in Judge Caswell's courtroom. The judge will report her findings to the appeals court; a ruling is not expected for at least several weeks.