Exhausting Day of Testimony Delays Rausch’s Sentencing

Tempers flared, tears fell and a torrent of words, some bitter and others conciliatory, were spoken at an emotional sentencing hearing Tuesday for Jason Rausch, who faces up to a year in jail as the driver in a crash that killed one of his former Newport Harbor High School classmates and seriously injured two others.

After an exhausting day of testimony, Superior Court Judge Everett Dickey said reluctantly that there was not enough time left to sentence Rausch. He ordered all parties to return today, stretching the hearing to four days.

Rausch, 19, was convicted in February on a charge of misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter, but the judge indicated then that he does not believe the young man, now a student at Orange Coast College, would benefit from jail time.

The parents of victim Donny Bridgman, who died in the May 1997 crash, spoke for more than an hour Tuesday about their pain and loss. Their remarks were sometimes deeply emotional, at other times scathing toward Rausch.

Vickie Bridgman stunned the courtroom when she walked to the defense table and placed two framed photos of her son in front of Rausch. One was of her son before the accident; the other showed his body in an ambulance after the crash.

“I would ask that they be given to Mr. Rausch,” Bridgman said to the judge. “They are a present.”

The incident drew gasps from spectators, including one woman who said aloud, “How cruel.”

Bridgman, an Orange County deputy district attorney, went on to call Rausch a liar and accuse him of manipulating the legal system. Later she choked back tears as she spoke of how her son would have been completing his first year of college now and how her dreams for him had been shattered.

“No one in this courtroom understands our pain and our loss,” she said. “The child we brought into this world together, we lost together. I have blinding pain and agony, and it causes me to sob and scream.”

The night of the accident, a group of 10 students piled into a 1989 Chevrolet Blazer driven by Rausch, who had not been drinking and was the designated driver. On a sharp curve on Irvine Avenue, the Blazer flipped and rolled at least twice, killing Bridgman.

Parents’ Pleas

Vickie Bridgman implored the judge Tuesday at least to suspend Rausch’s driver’s license and place him on probation.

“Please don’t let him drive,” she said tearfully. “Don’t let him drive for as long as possible. That would mean a lot to me and my family to know he’s off the road.”

Bruce Bridgman spoke of his oldest child as an “absolutely terrific boy.” But the father, also an attorney, was stopped cold by the judge when he began to criticize Dickey for reducing the charges against Rausch from felonies to misdemeanors.

“Your statement is at an end, sir,” Dickey said before calling a short recess.

After the break, Dickey allowed Bruce Bridgman to conclude his remarks. The father said he feels the legal system has “grossly” let his family down and that the Rausch case should be used as a model “of what should not happen.”

Diana Townsend, whose son Danny suffered a brain injury in the accident, testified that she believes Rausch should serve some time in jail to take responsibility for his actions. But she was attacked by defense attorney Jennifer Keller, who brought up that Danny Townsend himself had been involved in a car accident six months earlier in which he struck a pedestrian, breaking both of her legs.

Outside court, Townsend said she was “shocked that this came up in this case. That has nothing to do with this case. The only parallel is that Danny knows how Jason feels, having hurt someone.”

In contrast, the mother of victim Amanda Arthur, who was in a coma for 11 weeks after the accident, said Rausch should not be sent to jail. Chris Maese said her daughter suffers from a traumatic brain injury, but “there are times that she’s right on the money.”

She said Amanda, who was elected Newport Harbor homecoming queen last fall, is determined to improve even if she sometimes experiences bouts of frustration over the long hours of therapy required.

Maese told the hushed courtroom that she has forgiven Rausch for the accident and said he has often visited her daughter. She said he came to her in tears after the accident and begged for forgiveness.

“All I know in my heart is that a terrible accident has happened, and I feel everyone involved, including Jason, has been hurt, especially the Bridgmans,” Maese said. “I know that they are experiencing the greatest loss. We almost lost Amanda. But I also feel Jason was part of that accident. My only hope from the beginning was that we as parents, all of us, would have come together in unity and embraced one another and supported one another and helped one another.”

Rausch’s mother, Leslie Backstrom, told the judge that her son continues to have nightmares about the tragedy and has difficulty in school. She said he was suicidal in the days after the accident and accepts responsibility for it. She said she accompanied him to the Bridgman home two days after the accident and asked for forgiveness, which was granted at that time.

At the start of Tuesday’s proceedings, Dickey took the rare step of discounting a pre-sentencing report by Orange County probation officer Susan Nash, saying that the report was biased.

“The probation officer in this case deliberately chose to ignore the court’s findings to get a result she had predetermined,” Dickey said.

Nash had recommended that Rausch serve one year in jail, then three years of formal probation.