Dinius Trial is Winding Down

On Thursday, Victor Haltom, the attorney for Bismarck Dinius, rested his defense against the outrageous felony BUI charges for which his client is now on trial in Lake County. Dinius is, of course, the man with his hand on the tiller of the sailboat that was hit at high speed by a Lake County Sheriff’s Deputy, Russell Perdock. Lynn Thornton died in the accident. Instead of going after Perdock, who admitted to driving his speedboat in excess of 50 mph on that dark night more than three years ago, Lake County Prosecutor Jon E. Hopkins chose to prosecute Dinius.

The ‘tweets’ sent from the courtroom throughout the trial by both KGO Channel 7’s Dan Noyes and Lake County News’ Elizabeth Larson have been positively addictive. Through them we’ve ‘watched’ as Perdock testified last week that, just before hitting the sailboat, he saw the green glow of his running lights reflected against the hull.

Um, huh?

Anyone who’s followed this case will know that Perdock’s boat slammed into the starboard stern quarter of the sailboat, sailed over the top — bringing the mast down along the way — and landed near the port bow. Essentially, he was approaching at such an angle that he should have seen a red reflection from his port nav light, not green.

This seemed like such a glaring inconsistency that we contacted Bismarck about it. "Yeah, we caught that," he told us last week. He’s not sure how it will play into Haltom’s final arguments, if at all, but he seemed optimistic about how the final days of the trial has played out.

Indeed, Bismarck’s own testimony on Thursday really brought home the fact that he was crew — a passenger on a boat whose owner was giving the orders — and therefore not responsible for turning on any lights. The point is moot if jurors believe the several witnesses who claim to have seen the sailboat’s lights.

The jury is expected to receive the case tomorrow after closing arguments. We hope to have a full report in the September issue of Latitude 38. In the meantime, if you feel you can contribute to help defray the staggering costs of his defense, you can now do so through Paypal. Bismarck’s Paypal ID is [email protected].