Solicitor Donnie Myers found guilty of DUI, gets fine instead of jail

Longtime prosecutor Donnie Myers is guilty of drunken driving, Lexington County jurors decided Tuesday in the very courthouse where Myers won scores of professional triumphs.

Magistrate James Paslay fined the state’s longest-serving prosecutor $1,017 rather than impose a 30-day jail sentence, which is the maximum the law allows for the misdemeanor offense.

It is Myers’ first DUI conviction, though it’s his third alcohol-related charge in the past 11 years.

The five-man, one-woman jury took less than 30 minutes to reach a decision that Myers, 71, was impaired from drinking when he drove his silver 2007 Lexus into a utility pole on the way to his Lake Murray home on Feb. 22.

Jurors voted to believe Highway Patrol Cpl. Robert Rowe even though Rowe did not see the collision at Beech Creek and Old Chapin roads near the retiring prosecutor’s home. The jury also believed the patrol even though the judge earlier in the day threw out the Breathalyzer test that found Myers had a 0.09 blood-alcohol reading. State law sets 0.08 as the level at which a driver can be considered impaired.

Myers, the elected prosecutor for Lexington, Edgefield, McCormick and Saluda counties, has served in the post for 40 years. He announced earlier this year he would not seek at 11th term as 11th Circuit solicitor in the wake of the DUI charge. His final term expires at the end of the year.

Myers, who took the stand and said he was disoriented by injuries to his head and chest when he failed two field soberity tests, declined to comment after the verdict.

He testified that a white truck traveling on a rain-slick, foggy, two-lane blacktop ran him off the road. Myers admitted he had one drink earlier in the evening and had a second one in a styrofoam cup in his car. He also had in the vehicle a gun he carries for protection given how many people he has put in prison, his lawyer said.

Trooper Jamal Hall, who went to the crash site, said he found the cup containing a small amount of alcohol outside the Lexus and some ice on the back floorboard. Streaks of blood were on the doors of both side of the car. A lot of blood was inside the vehicle, Hall said.

Myers said he swerved to miss the oncoming truck. “All of a sudden out of nowhere, here comes this truck, coming straight at my driver’s door,” he testified. “If I had been impaired, I would not have been able to turn.”

The prosecutor said he called the chief of the State Law Enforcement Division, the sheriff of Lexington County and a major in the Highway Patrol to report the truck.

“Why didn’t you call 911?” asked the patrol’s attorney, Marcus Gore.

“They’re not investigators,” Myers answered. “I thought I’d call someone who could investigate.”

Myers declined any medical attention once he got home despite what he said Tuesday was “a tremendous blow” that caused heavy bleeding from his nose and mouth, pain in his chest and flickering eyesight and memories.

He said an unidentified passerby gave him a ride home.

Neither the defense team, the patrol or the prosecution team were able to locate the truck driver. Rowe said he could find no evidence that another vehicle forced Myers’ car off the road. The patrol found the gun in the car on the driver’s side floorboard, according to testimony.

Myers said he had a drink with a close friend, Don Langford, who asked to meet him at Uno’s pizza restaurant and bar in Lexington to discuss his estate and what to leave to his children. Langford has since passed away.

“It wasn’t a drinking meeting,” Myers testified. “It was a business meeting. It was about dying.”

Rowe also told the jury that Myers first said the truck came up behind him, then gave a different account. Myers’ lawyer, Heath Taylor, said it was Rowe who brought up the rear-end approach by the truck. Myers did not say that, Taylor argued.

The case against Myers took a hit just before 1 p.m. when Paslay, brought in from Spartanburg County because all Lexington County magistrates had potential conflicts of interest, threw out the Breathalyzer test results.

Paslay agreed with arguments from Taylor that SLED records about problems with the breath testing machine used on Myers were not explicit enough to allow the defense to question whether that particular machine was flawed when Myers was tested one hour and eight minutes after his arrest.

Taylor argued that state law requires SLED to keep “detailed” records, even when the machine resets itself if it detects a problem.

This story was originally published October 4, 2016 at 1:19 PM with the headline "Solicitor Donnie Myers found guilty of DUI, gets fine instead of jail."