Feb. 19--The woman who touched off a chain-reaction motorcycle accident that killed a St. Charles couple should either be released from prison or be allowed to withdraw her guilty plea, her attorney argued at a Thursday hearing.
Former Aurora resident Alia Bernard, 31, has already served four years in prison for the 2009 accident that killed Wade and Denise Thomas, and which her attorney Don Ramsell called a tragic, unintentional accident.
"She's learned every lesson that could be imagined from this," Ramsell told Kane County Judge David Kliment, who said he would rule on the case next month.
Bernard is scheduled to be paroled in March 2017 from the Dwight Correctional Center, where she is serving a seven-year sentence for aggravated DUI.
She was driving her car south on Route 47 near Batavia on May 23, 2009, when she rear-ended the last of three cars that had stopped in the road because the first car was waiting to turn left as a northbound group of motorcyclists passed.
The force of the collision forced the first car into the path of the cyclists, killing the Thomas couple, who were riding together. Several other cyclists were injured, including a man who was paralyzed from the waist down.
Authorities charged Bernard with the DUI count when lab results showed she had marijuana in her system. Prosecutors admitted that Bernard, who said she had ingested marijuana two days before, was not driving impaired, but charged her under the state law which outlaws motorists driving with any detectable amount of marijuana residue in their system.
First Assistant State's Attorney Jody Gleason argued that prison time was appropriate in Bernard's case.
"This was not an accident -- this was a crime," she said. "Maybe her life has changed in the last four years, but so have the lives of everybody else in this case."
Ramsell submitted a number of letters in support of Bernard's release, including one written by Kirk Wold, who is the son of crash victim Denise Thomas. Wold wrote that he reached out to Bernard in 2013 and they became friends.
"I believe what happened was a true accident, an event occurring by chance or unintentionally," he wrote.
Earlier in the hearing, Ramsell argued that Bernard should be allowed to withdraw the guilty plea she made in 2011 to the aggravated DUI charge. The attorney said Bernard's previous counsel did not adequately pursue what Ramsell said are issues with testing procedures at the Illinois State Police forensic lab.
The judge said he would address both the sentence motion and plea withdrawal request at a March 9 hearing.
Clifford Ward is a freelance reporter
