will one of us be next?

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May 21, 2008

N.C. woman blamed for hit-skip 700 miles away in Ohio

By LORI MONSEWICZ

The Repository

CANTON, Ohio (AP) -- Anna Hall Colvin — 7 1/2 months pregnant — was standing in the checkout line at a North Carolina Wal-Mart when Canton authorities dialed her cell phone with a surprise.

They told her she was wanted for hitting three men with her car.

Police had an arrest warrant, and she needed to come back to Stark County.

"The man was telling me that I needed to report to Ohio, and that I did a hit-and-skip, that I left the scene of an accident," she said. "I thought someone might have gotten my Social Security number, but when they told me they had my license plate number, I was shocked."

That license plate was on her red Monte Carlo sitting outside in the Wal-Mart parking lot roughly 700 miles away.

"I was crying, and the clerk just looked at me and she kept asking me if I was all right."

It was a mistake that almost didn't get caught.

It wasn't until Colvin returned to Ohio, lined up eyewitnesses to back her whereabouts and fought the case in court that her innocence came to light.

City prosecutors realized the mistake and dropped the charges, but not before a jury had heard many of the contradictory details during a trial last week in Municipal Court.

"They did the right thing, but after they put this woman though hell and cost her thousands of dollars," said her attorney, Brian Pierce of Akron.

"It is just a very unique and amazing case, but I feel we did the right thing in the end," said Canton City Prosecutor Frank Forchione. "We had two eyewitnesses and one being a parole officer, it appeared to be a very solid case initially."

Colvin, a Carroll County native, was blamed as the driver of a hit-and-run car that struck three parole officers. The pedestrians had walked out of the Stark County Courthouse at Tuscarawas Street and Market Avenue in Canton when they were hit by a gray Buick on Jan. 23.

One victim testified he rolled onto the hood. All three were knocked down and needed to be treated at area hospitals.

Testimony in court said the female driver drove a short distance before sticking her head out the window to say, "Sorry," before driving away, Pierce said.

The parole officer — who said he had seen the license plate of the gray Buick that hit them — had typed the number into the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles Web site that he has access to through his job, Pierce said.

It came back belonging to Colvin, whose maiden name was Hall when she owned a brown Buick three years ago while in Ohio. The vehicle later was wrecked but still under her name on state records.

Forchione said eyewitnesses supplied the same license plate numbers.

But Colvin, the wife of a Marine who served in Fallujah, Iraq, from Sept. 2006 through May 2007, was not in Canton. She said she was baby-sitting another Marine's child in Camp LeJeune, N.C., when the mishap in Canton occurred.

Pierce said he supplied the alibi information to prosecutors months ago in hopes they would drop the criminal case against his client. She was charged with failing to yield to a pedestrian and leaving an accident scene, a first-degree misdemeanor that can bring up to six months in jail.

But prosecutors remained firm, so the case went to trial. On the stand, two of the victims and another driver who happened to witness the collision identified Colvin as the driver of the gray Buick.

"The disturbing thing is both (parole officers) point to her and say, 'We're positive that's the person that hit us, that's her driving the car that day,'" Pierce said.

Colvin, her husband Tommy Colvin, and two other Marines were subpoenaed to testify and traveled from North Carolina to back her. The case took an unusual twist just before the jury was to hear closing arguments. A motor vehicles bureau worker who had testified about Colvin's Buick went back to her office and started doing more research.

Forchione said the bureau worker notified the court that "sometimes people get the first and last license plate numbers right," but often confuse middle digits. The worker reran the license plate numbers, transposing one digit. The worker discovered new information that helped convince prosecutors they had the wrong person.

A Canton teenager who looks like Colvin had a similar license plate number and was the registered owner of a gray Buick.

"The amazing thing is that these two look almost exactly alike," Forchione said, adding that even the teenager's mother bears a strong resemblance to Colvin.

"If you take all her piercings out of her face, she looks just like me," Colvin said, adding she was shocked when she saw the teen's driver's license photograph. "I just cried." Prosecutors still aren't sure who was driving the vehicle. The investigation continues.

But the new evidence was enough to convince Forchione and Assistant City Prosecutor Gretchen Stocker to dismiss the charges against Colvin.

One of the Ohio Adult Parole Authority officers who was struck by the car referred questions to the prosecutor's office. The other two could not be reached for comment.

The incident has cost Colvin more than $7,000 and an eight-hour stay in jail after her arrest.

"You could have had an innocent person convicted of something they clearly didn't do, and that's disturbing," Pierce said. "The No. 1 cause of wrongful convictions is faulty eyewitness identification, and this is a perfect example of that."

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Information from: The Repository, http://www.cantonrep.com

[Claude]

Testimony in court said the female driver drove a short distance before sticking her head out the window to say, "Sorry," before driving away, Pierce said.

Will that be considered an admission of guilt or will the spontaneous apology reduce her sentence?