A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention (38 page)

“I’m from Tremonton, Utah.” He got that far before his voice broke the first time. “And, uh, the lady that just spoke mentioned of, uh . . . an accident caused, um, in September 2006. Um, I was the one driving the car, texting while driving. Um. Excuse me, I apologize, this is hard for me,” he said, his voice cracking, on the edge of grief. “At the time, before, I did not know of the dangers. I was young. I was ignorant. No one had really talked to me about it, and I know that’s how a lot of people feel today. A lot of people might not know what text messaging is, what is involved, how you do it. It is dangerous.”

By this point, Reggie had regained much of his composure. It seemed that when he talked about the theoretical, the policy—like whether texting is dangerous—he could hold it together. When he spoke about what he had done, how he felt, then he fell apart, as he did with the next sentence.

“That accident has changed my life forever,” he said, now really fighting to hold it together. He choke back a sob. “Never, to this point, have I gotten a chance to apologize to those families. I know that they’re here today, and I’d like them to know I’m sincerely sorry.”

In the audience, Terryl and the families were not sure what to think. Who was this kid, exactly? The one who had lied? The one trying to do a number on Judge Willmore to get his sentence lightened? Was he just satisfying his community-service requirement as outlined in the plea in abeyance? Or was this something more sincere?

Terryl had met him briefly, prior to the hearing. She, in particular, was having a hell of a time sizing him up. An emotional wall that had been around him came down. She picked up on it when they had met, and now, here was Reggie, sounding a lot more like the person Kaylene had described.

“This accident has affected my life forever. Um, I can’t even put it into words. And to see a law passed that would prevent people to do this would mean a lot to me, to be able to know that nobody else would have to go through what I’ve gone through. That they would be aware of the dangers that this text messaging is, and what it can do, and the effects it can have. So please listen to the things that I have said, and know it is dangerous and it affects a lot of people’s lives and it is not safe.”

He turned and walked back to his seat.

There was a hush over the chamber. Terryl looked around and noticed something: Reggie had brought down the house. “There wasn’t a dry eye,” she says. All the texting had stopped, all the fidgeting. “You could hear a pin drop.”

TERRYL COULD FEEL HER
perspective radically change. It wasn’t just the words or the tone. Reggie was deeply injured, you could just feel it. “In a moment,” she says, “I completely turned, in a moment.”

It was a remarkable change for her, as instant as the speed with which she’d turned her energies against Reggie. She had heard this apology and it sounded real. She wasn’t looking to punish Reggie for the sake of punishment, but she couldn’t stand someone who victimized other people and just acted like it was the victim’s fault, or there was no blame. That was what bad parents did to defenseless little girls. Now she heard Reggie sound completely real, tortured even. He sounded truly sorry.

“What he said resonated so much. He could’ve been anyone’s brother, anyone’s boyfriend, anybody’s child—Taylor, or Jayme, any of us. When he just sobbed, I thought: ‘You could be anybody.’ ”

She still wanted him to serve jail time and she wanted something good to come from the tragedy. But she realized that she and Reggie were no longer on opposite sides. Maybe they could join forces.

“I decided then and there that I would work with him.”

REPRESENTATIVE CLARK THOUGHT:
REGGIE
just turned the whole thing around.

“We all just sat there dumbfounded, like: ‘Oh, my gosh, that could’ve been our kid,’ ” Clark says, looking back.

Aagard quietly said: “We appreciate your courage to do this.”

The chair asked for comment from the members of the committee. There was a brief discussion. Something was different, something even more sober. The makeup of the committee had changed from the last meeting, too. Given all the absences, there were more Democrats than Republicans by a margin of 4–3, with the Democrats perhaps more likely to push the bill out of committee.

Still, going into the hearing, Clark had serious doubts. “I’d been lobbying them all along, and I couldn’t get any commitments from them at all. They said things like: ‘Well, you do that and pretty soon you’re going to take the phones away from us.’ ”

After Aagard opened the discussion, Wimmer asked to speak. He reiterated his concerns, but he changed the emphasis of his opposition to whether a law like this could be enforceable. He proposed to do a study. “Let’s get a report back a year later, in the next session, on if this is effective,” he said. “In my experience as a police officer, I really question whether this is enforceable at all. I’d like to be proven wrong—who hasn’t been stuck behind a person texting and wanted to throw the phone out the window.” The line got only a mild laugh. The room had changed; Reggie had altered the tenor to something decidedly sober.

Wimmer then said something remarkable. “I hope we’re very careful as we go down this road. I’m adamantly, adamantly opposed to outlawing cell phone usage while we’re driving. I hope we don’t start carving out every little possible thing that I’m sure ninety percent of us have done in our vehicle—adjusting the radio, adjusting the air conditioner, all the careless distractions we do.”

It was noteworthy because it was a sign of what had happened to the room, and what was about to happen. A few minutes later, there was a motion to pass the bill out of committee. It passed, with only Wimmer objecting. It was a huge hurdle.

On February 26, it passed the full House, by a vote of 55–20. It would still have to pass the Senate and be signed into law.

CHAPTER 41

JUSTICE

O
N MARCH 10, AT
3:50 p.m., justice was served in a maelstrom of emotion, grief, and a nagging uncertainty that had plagued these people since it all began.

Judge Willmore sat elevated, sedate, tie barely showing over the top of his black robe, his torso seeming nearly to shrink behind the bench. He spoke slowly, deliberately, a slight, distant whistle in his voice accompanying some of his harder syllables. Short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, glasses, he was a patient, almost invisible arbiter of justice with an occasional strained pitch in his voice to punctuate the frustrations this case had inspired in him.

In the copy of
Les Misérables
that he kept in the upper right drawer of his desk, he had underlined many passages. There was one, on page 74 of his edition, that comes under the heading “A Place for Arriving at Convictions” and discusses a chaotic courtroom scene in France in the early 1900s, where the book’s protagonist, Jean Valjean, faces judgment.

“At one end of the hall at which he found himself, heedless justice in threadbare robes were biting their fingernails or closing their eyelids, at the other end was a ragged rabble. There were lawyers in all sorts of attitudes,” the passage begins, and goes on to describe this mess of humanity, all the absorbed and self-absorbed participants, even the inattentive judges, but then concludes: “for men felt herein the presence of that great human thing which is called law and that great divine thing that is called justice.”

Judge Willmore called to order the courtroom. Seated in the galley, a smattering of onlookers joined the families. On the left side (from the judge’s perspective) Terryl was seated beside Jackie, who sat with Megan and her husband. Leila sat on the other side of the aisle.

Linton waited at the prosecutor’s table, in a black suit and maroon tie. Beside him was Rindlisbacher in a heavy, brown highway patrol jacket. Reggie and Bunderson sat to the far left; Reggie looked less terrified than brave, almost welcoming.

Judge Willmore explained that a plea had been reached, and that he’d rule shortly on the particulars of the sentence. He had a few conditions up the sleeve of his robe that the parties hadn’t bargained for.

First, he asked Bunderson and Reggie to come to the defense table, across the aisle from Linton, to hear what they had to say in advance of sentencing. Bunderson, half a head shorter than Reggie, pulled the thin microphone close and began by asking for Judge Willmore to set another hearing in six months. By that time, Bunderson said, Reggie should have been able to complete whatever jail time he’d been assigned and the fifty hours of community service that the parties had agreed to.

He’s not done yet, Bunderson said, but “he’s heading that direction.” And in six months, Bunderson hoped, the judge would allow Reggie to be done with his sentence and have his record cleared.

Then the lawyer delved into the presentencing report, the one compiled by Kaylene Yonk. “I’ve rarely seen a presentencing report so favorable to the defendant.” He went on to say that Kaylene described Reggie as having been in shock after the accident and that’s why, Bunderson said, he didn’t tell Rindlisbacher what had happened or even remember or know what had happened.

“He’s not a criminal in any sense of the word other than he was involved in an accident and he’s willing to take responsibility for it,” Bunderson said. “He’s willing to man up.”

And he sought to distinguish what Reggie had done—the act of texting and driving—from other negligent behaviors with terrible consequences. “This is not a crime in the sense that you deal with every day or in the sense that Mr. Linton and I deal with every day. There’s no intent in any of this.

“Your Honor,” he continued, becoming more animated, “there but for the grace of God go I, go you, goes everyone in this courtroom—Mr. Linton, Officer Rindlisbacher, and everyone else here. We’ve all looked at something or done something to distract ourselves while driving.”

He seemed to address the courtroom. “Any of you who have yelled at the kids, you’ve been distracted. Any of you who looked at a flock of geese while driving, you’ve been distracted. It’s just a matter of degree.”

“It’s a matter of consequence,” the judge interrupted, a slight edge in his voice.

“I’m not denying that Your Honor,” Bunderson countered quickly. “This could have happened to any of us.”

DIRECTLY BEHIND BUNDERSON AND
Reggie, a few rows back, Jackie jotted notes on a small pad, looking impassive. Megan looked irritated, even bored, her eyes sometimes wandering from the proceedings. Their faces didn’t betray their incredulity. Bunderson, in describing Reggie’s actions as being like any other distraction, seemed to run afoul of everything that they had learned during this twenty-nine-month period, from Dr. Strayer and all the rest. To these families, it all seemed so disingenuous, the thinly veiled plea for mercy and, most of all, the idea that Reggie was taking responsibility, “willing to man up.”

All they’d had for two and a half years was silence and lies. Now, a veritable deathbed conversion, a presentencing conversion. How contrite or sorry could Reggie really be, and why?

Bunderson concluded. Judge Willmore asked if Reggie had anything to say.

REGGIE HAD STARTED WRITING
apology letters days after the accident, the ones he never sent. Some just said “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over. He’d practiced this idea in his head virtually daily, multiple times a day. But when he started, the first few minutes, it sounded like a high school essay—topic sentences followed by explanations.

He began: “I wrote this letter to those I have harmed.”

He wore a blue suit and yellow tie, his hair close-cut, the sideburns slightly long as had become the style. He’d filled out the last couple of years, looking just shy of imposing, especially next to the older, slighter Bunderson. His voice tended to be slightly high, plaintive.

“At this time, I would like to express my love and remorse toward their families who have been in my heart and in my prayers daily,” he read from his letter. “I truly realize and I understand that I was wrong to not pay closer attention.”

Behind him, Jackie shifted in her seat but seemed unmoved.

Reggie apologized for his ignorance, saying he wished he could rewind the tape, give back the lives of “these great men.” He talked about learning of the dangers of distracted driving, vowing to “take this terrible situation and help make the roads a safer place for us and our families.”

Here, a few minutes in, the tenor changed, almost like he’d completed the part he felt compelled to say, or was coached to say, and now moved on to the part he wanted to say.

“I’ve learned over the past couple of years . . .” Reggie paused to not lose his emotions. “. . . that good people strive to care for and help protect people’s lives. Good people learn from their mistakes and try to make them right and seek forgiveness from those they have offended or harmed.

“I am here today striving to be a good person.

“In reflecting at who I was age at nineteen, I am very ashamed by my decisions and my decision making at that time.” A bailiff walked over and put a box of tissue in front of Reggie. Behind him, in the rows, Megan crossed her arms, Jackie’s head was tilted as if watching an unusual animal at the zoo.

“I am also very embarrassed by how I handled myself in this situation. I give you my solemn vow that I will never behave in that manner again.” Reggie choked back tears. Bunderson looked straight down. Reggie explained he regularly cries and that his “tears of remorse have caused me to change in every possible way.”

He continued: “I can’t take back my actions. I can only live from this day on in service to others in remorseful remembrance of James Furfaro and Keith O’Dell.” He could barely get the words out, the next few minutes halting in presentation, and in that way, and substance, the high-school-essay nature melted away to core grief.

He explained that remorse, to be real, must be “coupled with action.” The time has come, he said, to act. First, he said, he must apologize.