MINEOLA, Long Island (1010 WINS) -- A jury on Wednesday began deliberating whether to convict a man of murder for driving the wrong way down a Long Island parkway, with his alcohol blood level allegedly three times the legal limit, and slamming head-on into a wedding limousine, killing the chauffeur and a 7-year-old flower girl.
Martin Heidgen, 25, of Valley Stream, was charged with murder, a rarity in DWI fatal crashes, after prosecutors said he showed a ``depraved indifference to human life'' by allegedly ignoring drivers on the highway who flashed their headlights and honked their horns trying to alert him he was driving the wrong way.
Prosecutors alleged Heidgen drove his pickup truck more than two miles north in the southbound lanes of the divided highway before slamming head-on into the limousine heading home from a family wedding in July 2005.
The 7-year-old flower girl, Katie Flynn, and limousine driver Stanley Rabinowitz, 59, were killed. Five other members of the Flynn family were injured.
Authorities said Heidgen's blood alcohol level was 0.28; the legal limit in New York state is 0.08.
Following a 75-minute instruction on the law by acting State Supreme Court Justice Alan Honorof, the jury began deliberating at 12:15 p.m.
In closing arguments on Tuesday, Heidgen's defense attorney asked for a guilty verdict against his client _ just not on the murder charge, which he termed ``extreme.'' Stephen LaMagna suggested jurors return a guilty verdict on a lesser count of criminally negligent homicide. The murder charge carries a prison term of 25 years to life; the lesser count has a four-year prison term.
The jury also could convict on second-degree manslaughter, which has a 15-year maximum term.
LaMagna complained that prosecutors want Heidgen to be held to the ``same standard as a cold-blooded murderer,'' but insisted, ``this is a kid who drank too much and got lost on the way home.''
He said prosecutors failed to prove his client, who had recently moved to Long Island from Little Rock, Ark., was depressed or suicidal the night of the crash.
``If this case weren't so serious, their evidence, or lack of evidence, would be laughable,'' he said. ``Because it's so serious, it's not laughable, it's disgraceful.''
Assistant District Attorney Maureen McCormick, in her closing argument, twice played the jury a brief video clip, shot from a security camera inside the limousine, that captured the deadly crash.
``This is the best piece of evidence, it doesn't rely on assumptions or speculation,'' she told jurors.
In the silent courtroom, with the video frozen to show the carnage left by the impact, McCormick dramatically pointed at the screen and pleaded, ``That's depraved indifference murder. Convict him.''
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