(JASON EDGE SPEAKING)
(RHONDA FLOWERS SPEAKING)
(JASON SPEAKING)
(RHONDA SPEAKING)
JASON: The car went off the roadway.
It hit a culvert.
The car flipped. There was a rollover.
Rhonda and her friend Jo survived the crash.
Her mother did not.
I'll never get over losing Mother in my car.
But I have to live with it,
and I know that it was just an accident.
The prosecution is gonna try to paint a picture
of Rhonda being high and driving all over the road.
RHONDA: The idea of having to go to court
and then 12 people decide the rest of my life
frankly scares me to death.
My name is Jason Edge, with the Edge Law Firm here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
I'm a criminal defense attorney.
I represent Rhonda Flowers,
who is charged with manslaughter in the first degree
of her own mother,
In August of 2019, Rhonda, her best friend, Jo Campbell,
and her mother, Betty Samples,
who was, I believe, 89 at the time,
were driving in Nowata, Oklahoma,
and they were traveling to go to a family dinner.
En route to that family dinner
the car went off the roadway.
It hit a culvert.
The car flipped.
There was a rollover.
Rhonda and her friend Jo survived the crash.
Her mother, unfortunately, did not.
The state is alleging that Rhonda was driving
under the influence of Ambien, a prescription sleep aid.
And they're also alleging that she was driving
while speeding and driving recklessly.
She's charged with manslaughter in the first degree,
which means Rhonda could be facing
potentially up to life in prison.
I think this was just a tragic accident on a dangerous road,
and this case should have never been filed.
I could not imagine having to live with the fact that I had an accident
in which my mother perished,
and have to be facing the rest of my life in prison, for that.
It's been three years now, almost,
and this trial is still hanging over Rhonda's head.
Uh, we don't believe that she's gotten the proper time to grieve.
The only sense of justice, in my opinion,
would be her walking out of that courtroom free.
Anything else would be unjust.
This is where I had purchased a home,
to downsize and to fix it up for Mother.
She and I were going to live here.
For me I've never been able to put Mother to rest.
I just can't live here without her.
I've had this house,
almost three years,
and this is the extent of my life.
It just looks like what my life feels like,
it just got put on hold somewhere.
August the 26th of 2019,
that was sort of the end of life as I knew it.
It was roughly three or four months
after the accident that I found out
that I'm being charged
with first degree manslaughter of my mother.
And so everything has just sat
while I wait on trial.
You know, I've just had to decide
I have to take care of this stuff
as if I'm not coming back for a while.
This house had a lot of different rooms to it,
and I opened it completely up for her to be able to get around
with her walker and things.
I had a purpose when I did this
and that purpose is gone,
and she was a wonderful mother,
always there for you.
I knew she loved me, and I know she knows I loved her,
and I wouldn't have hurt her for anything.
(CRIES)
(PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING)
Rhonda's coming in to meet with me today,
and we're gonna be going over our trial preparation.
Hi, Rhonda, come on back.
I'm going to give her a chance
to go over everything that she remembers
from the day of this tragic accident that took her mom's life,
so that I can be best prepared to tell her story to the jury.
Trial is rapidly approaching.
I wanna make sure that I'm absolutely
crystal clear about what happened.
-I had planned to rest that day... -Okay.
...until dinner and I took one of my Ambien,
and I took that at about ten.
And obviously that's not the time you normally take it.
No, normally I take it to sleep at night,
but I knew that I needed some rest.
We had made plans to go for dinner around five o'clock.
Mother and I drove down to my friend Jo's house.
She got in the car,
and my brother lives to the east of town.
When I got to the intersection, I made a right turn
to go out and pick him up.
At some point, he said we passed him.
So I get a telephone call asking me where I'm going.
-There was some confusion. -Okay.
His understanding was that he was going to meet us there.
I went on a mission to find a place to turn around.
And when we got back to the same intersection we had pulled out from,
that is where we hit that culvert
that sent us airborne and had the accident.
Do you recall speeding? Do you think you were speeding?
I have no recollection of seeing
the speed limit on my dashboard.
What do you remember about the accident?
It was very quick.
All I had time to do was just to hold on
until it was over with.
The first thing when everything stopped,
I remember asking Jo, "Are you all right?"
And she said, "Yes, I am, are you?"
And then I immediately noticed
Mother being completely
face down in the seat of the car.
I thought the wind was knocked out of her.
I thought she just didn't have her breath.
-And her seat belt was on her? -Her seat belt was on.
She never rode in the car without her belt on.
-And did either of your front airbags... -No.
-...deploy? -No.
It seemed very quick that people were at the car.
But they just immediately told me that she was gone.
Okay.
So they charge you with manslaughter
on two alternate theories, okay?
It's not two charges of manslaughter.
It's manslaughter under theory A,
or manslaughter under theory B.
The first one is manslaughter based on them alleging
that you were DUI,
driving under the influence of Ambien,
your prescription sleep medicine.
The second one is
they're telling the jury if they don't believe that,
then they can still convict you of manslaughter
if they believe that you were driving recklessly
and caused an accident, okay?
The charge of manslaughter that they have charged you with,
if you're convicted, that carries between four years up to life.
We don't think that you're guilty.
We don't think that you're being fairly charged here,
and we're gonna do everything in our power
to make sure the jury knows that.
I appreciate your work on it.
-Thank you. -We'll try.
The prosecution is gonna try to paint a picture
of Rhonda being high, actively under the influence
of her prescription Ambien
and driving all over the road.
I believe Rhonda, but that doesn't mean
that a jury will believe her, and that's the challenge.
RHONDA: The idea of having to go to court
and then 12 people decide the rest of my life
frankly scares me to death.
But there's nothing they can do to me
that's worse than what has happened to me,
and I have to carry the loss of my mother for the rest of my life.
JASON: The state's charged Rhonda with manslaughter
in the first degree of her own mother.
The main obstacle is that Ambien was found in her blood.
(PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING)
The timeline that we have is about seven hours, um,
after Rhonda had taken the Ambien
until before the accident happened.
-JASON: Hi, Dr. Stevens. -Hey, Jason.
One of the things that I wanna go through
with our expert, the pharmacologist,
is how long Ambien stays in the system.
First of all, do you have any ultimate conclusions
that you came to from the report?
DR. CRAIG STEVENS: To tell you the truth, it's not exactly clear what was done.
The actual report just says,
ethyl alcohol content, none detected.
Zolpidem...
That's it. Doesn't say zolpidem level,
doesn't say the method they used.
So there is no way you can conclude
that a person was intoxicated
just because of detection.
JASON: Based on a five milligram dosage,
how many hours after taking it
would it be reasonably safe to assume
the person would be fine to drive?
If she took five milligrams at, at 10:00 a.m.,
theoretically, at about 11:00 a.m.,
she would have the peak amount in her blood.
It gets you to sleep and kind of holds you
to sleep for three or four hours.
But then, as it comes down,
it would not be effective anymore.
And it's designed that way on purpose,
because when you take it at night
before you go to sleep,
you don't want to wake up the next day and still be groggy
when you get in your car or anything like that.
That wouldn't concern you for somebody to be driving
seven hours after a five milligram dose?
No, not at all.
I'm concerned that jurors are going to say,
"Well, it still showed in her blood.
"I don't understand how it could be in her blood, but not affect her."
Right, zolpidem, I think that's been detected
uh, as long as 20 hours after taking a pill.
You, you're saying 20 hours later
you can still find the presence
of that drug in somebody's system?
That definitely doesn't mean
that they're under the influence.
That's correct. Hopefully, the jurors will understand
that idea of a trace amount
will not equal intoxication to them.
-Appreciate it. -Okay. Thank you.
-Yes, thank you. -Nice meeting you.
Nice to meet you also.
JASON: The meeting with Dr. Stevens went great.
I think he's going to be an excellent witness for us.
I think the truth will come out and it'll be in Rhonda's favor.
RHONDA: At the time of the accident,
my husband had been in
a long-term care facility for about a year.
It just became harder and harder to care for him.
It's just all-encompassing, and it's emotionally draining.
Um, all you're doing is handing somebody food
and helping them shower,
but it just gets progressively worse.
Over the years, our relationship
became very difficult.
I couldn't, I couldn't see anything else on the other side.
You're just going through the motions.
I mean, you just get up,
put one foot in front of the other and...
and I did it, but I eventually
got to where I didn't do it very well.
It, it really, really wore on me.
I couldn't sleep and I would call and,
and talk to my doctor, and eventually he decided
he would prescribe me the 0.5 Ambien to help me sleep.
And that's how I came to have that in my life.
We have some discovery here
from the electronic data recording
from Rhonda's car, the day of the accident.
It appears to be showing the moments and the seconds
right before the accident happened.
But the most important thing
that we're looking for first off is speed.
Rhonda doesn't remember how fast she was going.
Our hopes are that we find that she was just going
a few miles an hour over the speed limit,
and that certainly doesn't mean reckless driving.
Here we go.
The speed limit that she was driving in,
to my understanding was 35-miles-per-hour zone.
And if these are saying she was going 57 miles per hour,
that's more than 20 miles per hour over the speed limit.
That is not good numbers for us.
(PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING)
It appears that they're going to be trying to say
that Rhonda was going somewhere between
55 to 57 miles per hour
in a 35-mile-per-hour zone,
so that's definitely going to be a problem.
I'm not going to take it at face value.
If there's a way to attack this data,
then we're gonna find out how to do it.
We have the burden to prove
that she was not driving recklessly.
So I'm going to bring in our investigator Clay Bellenger.
CLAY: I am headed up to the scene of the accident.
And we want to go out and have a look at the scene,
look at the... what evidence might still be there.
Um, see how the traffic flows through there.
Speed limit is 35 through this curve.
Um, actually right before the curve it changes.
It goes from 55, 45 to 35,
which is pretty slow, uh, on a highway coming into town.
I'm sure there's been a lot of accidents
that have happened here uh, besides this one,
because it's a curve coming off of a highway speed of 55
down to 35 pretty quick.
Right in here is where,
where the car first left the roadway,
the tires came right through here
and straight for this culvert.
And kind of the front right of the car
would have hit this sharp edge.
And then the car did a complete rollover,
landed back on its wheels on the other side of the roadway there.
Rhonda would have been coming up to this curve,
like these cars are right here.
Kind of getting a feel for the speed that these cars are going.
She was supposedly going 57 miles an hour before she hit the culvert.
I don't think I've seen anybody anywhere close to 57 yet.
A lot of cars are going, I would say, average around 40 miles an hour.
So 57, it's definitely too fast for this curve, if that's what she was doing,
and it does worry me about, about that.
JO: You know what I was thinking the other day,
we've been friends since, um, what third grade?
-So we've been buddies for a long time. -Yeah, 60 years.
Jo is my best friend.
We've been there for each other forever.
We're determined to keep it that way
in spite of... what has happened.
After the crash, I had a broken elbow,
and my pelvis was broken.
I could not walk.
So I had to have surgery.
It was an accident.
I mean, it was just a plain accident.
I never thought it was anything any more than that.
The class reunion is this... coming up in June.
Can't plan anything.
-Well, one day at a time. -Hmm.
Watching her go through the,
the tragedy of losing her mother,
and then, on top of all of that,
uh, she's got a very sick husband,
she's carried a load.
I can't imagine her, uh...
well, having to deal with all of this.
Jo is the only independent eye witness to this accident.
So Jo's testimony is the closest thing
to the truth that we're gonna get.
-Hi, Jo. -Hi.
-Thanks for coming in. -Okay, thank you.
We definitely want to ask Jo whether she felt safe
when Rhonda was driving, and ask her about the timeline
of the events of that day that led up to this accident.
Rhonda came and picked me up at my house.
-She made a right turn. -MELANIE: All right.
And as she pulled out, her brother Bill
must have driven past us
on his way to the restaurant.
So Rhonda believed that she was supposed to go pick her brother up?
Yes, and she received a, a phone call from Bill.
She didn't have her phone in her hand
-while she was driving? -No, sir. No.
Was Rhonda texting while she was driving?
No, sir, she was not.
She was talking with him
through the car phone.
JASON: How did that conversation go?
They both were confused on what was going on.
"Why are you heading that direction,
"I'm coming to pick you up?"
"Well, I'm heading to the Mexican restaurant."
Was she upset, after this phone call with her brother?
No, it wasn't a fight. It wasn't an argument.
It was just, you know, a little bit of a,
I guess you'd say a misunderstanding.
JASON: Right up before the accident
was there any erratic or scary driving
that you remember noticing?
No.
No, there was not.
JASON: They are going to accuse her of being actively
under the influence of her sleep aid, her Ambien.
Did you have any concerns about her ability
-to drive at that time? -No.
-Nothing alarmed you? -No.
MELANIE: The reports indicate that you were not wearing your seat belt.
That is correct.
JASON: Now, you said Betty had her seat belt on.
Yes, she did.
-Now, Rhonda was wearing her seat belt, too. -Yes, sir, she was.
MELANIE: Is it fair to say if you had been concerned,
do you think you would have put the seat belt on?
Oh, I, I'm pretty sure I would have put it on
if I would have felt like anything was wrong with her.
Okay.
It's just been so unfortunate
that Rhonda's being treated the way she's being treated.
-MELANIE: Sure. -It's a tragedy.
And, uh, you know, I, it just, it hurts.
Every day I, I hurt for her.
(VOICE BREAKING) All I can do is just pray to God every day
that those 12 people will be understanding
and will realize...
she didn't kill her mother that day.
It was a freak accident.
JASON: Jo's testimony definitely helps us counter the state's accusation
that Rhonda was driving recklessly.
It's honest emotions that are coming out of her
when she, really, relives these events.
I think a jury's gonna see that,
and more importantly, a jury's going to feel that.
What Jo's testimony tells us
is that this was just, quite simply a tragic accident.
-Hey, Melanie. -Hey.
JASON: William or Bill, Rhonda's brother
has been subpoenaed to testify against his sister,
by all accounts against his will.
Rhonda and Bill have a loving brother-sister relationship.
After this accident that unfortunately took his mother's life,
he's alleged to have said some things,
um, that the state's now trying to use against Rhonda.
William stated the vehicle forced him off the road.
William stated he then realized that the vehicle
that had been in his lane of traffic
was being driven by his sister, Rhonda Flowers.
Um, he said he called her and asked her if she was drunk.
-We know she wasn't drunk. -Right.
The blood test came back 0.00 alcohol.
-MELANIE: Right. -That's as sober as you can be.
So I think that they're gonna try to use her own brother's statement,
to the police, against her.
That's a, that's a bad picture.
Is it not reasonable to expect that Bill,
who just learned that he lost his mom,
might have made an exaggerated statement?
Bill is on his sister's side.
Make no mistake about that.
He appears at court with her just about every time she comes,
um, and is very supportive of Rhonda.
However, the state has subpoenaed him
to come testify as their witness,
whether he wants to be or not.
In my experience, jurors don't tend
to look favorably, um, on the defendant
if that defendant has family members testifying against them.
Jurors tend to put a little bit more weight into that testimony,
and that certainly worries us a little bit.
JASON: Rhonda left us a message
through her answering service this morning
saying that her husband just passed away.
It sounds like he just passed away today.
Think give her a call? Okay.
That's a lot of stress for somebody to be going through,
facing the trial for manslaughter of her own mother,
and at the same time, right before trial, her husband dies.
It's, um, you know, we just hope she's okay.
(LINE TRILLING)
(RHONDA SPEAKING)
Hi, Rhonda.
- (RHONDA SPEAKING) -Hi. It's Jason.
-I heard the news. - (RHONDA SPEAKING)
I'm terribly, terribly sorry. I can't imagine everything
-you're going through right now. -Well.
(RHONDA SPEAKING)
Oh, God.
(RHONDA SPEAKING)
No, that's...
(RHONDA SPEAKING)
JASON: You've got a lot on your emotional plate.
(RHONDA SPEAKING)
Because I don't know everything you're gonna have
to deal with right now
with your family, his family,
funeral arrangements, things like that,
and, and getting ready for this trial in, what, six days.
Um, the D.A. did say that
he would have no objection at all
if you wanted to ask for a continuance.
(RHONDA SIGHS)
(RHONDA SPEAKING)
Okay.
We will, we will ask,
um, and if the judge says no,
then we'll be ready to go in six days.
(RHONDA SPEAKING)
All right, Rhonda, best wishes.
(RHONDA SPEAKING)
The Lord decided it was time for him to go.
Rhonda and Bobby had been married for 37 years.
Not many people can live alone.
I lost my spouse,
and it helps to have another human being
around to offer support.
She's been having a rough few days.
She goes to her bed, and just sleeps
because she can't turn her mind off.
I just can't imagine it.
I care about her very much, and I, and I do worry about her.
Uh, we have a new wrinkle
in the case that has now become an issue
that we're gonna have to deal with.
A little over a month before this accident happened,
Rhonda was arrested for a misdemeanor DUI.
There was no accident. Nobody was injured or hurt.
It's still a pending case.
She has not pled guilty to it.
She's not been found guilty of it.
However, the state filed a motion
stating that they intend
to introduce evidence
of this misdemeanor DUI alcohol arrest
in her manslaughter trial.
We fully believe that the state
is trying to introduce this evidence
just to paint an overall bad picture
about the character of Rhonda.
I've spoken with Rhonda about this,
and she was going through a time in her life
that just was not a happy time.
And I think she found herself self-medicating with alcohol.
But that still doesn't have a damn thing to do
with whether or not she's guilty of man-slaughter in her mom.
And now a jury might be deciding
the fate of the rest of Rhonda's life
based on things that have nothing to do with what she's charged with.
And that's just sad and scary.
RHONDA: Come over here with me.
Nothing to bark at.
Over the last few months,
I've had a lot of things on my mind
and we would have been in court in May,
but the judge
and the assistant district attorney
agreed to let us have extra time
due to my husband's death.
HARRY: There is nothing to be gained
by taking her out of society.
She loved her mother very deeply,
and, um, she has been punished
enough by herself and well,
for the rest of her life.
RHONDA: Mother will never be out of my life.
I still see her, you know, she was right there next to me.
Yeah.
Anything that they do is, is just really location,
put me someplace other than where I am and I'll...
Everything else is on the inside still gonna be there.
REPORTER: Nearly half of the Nowata Police Department resigned today.
So possibly ground-breaking. This just hit the news.
REPORTER: Four of Nowata's seven-officer police force
turned in their badges, along with a reserve officer.
Officers say they've had serious
ethical concerns with leadership,
including issues of officer safety
and a potential constitutional violation.
JASON: I'm in a bit of a shock right now.
At least four officers have just quit and resigned.
And apparently these allegations go back as early as 2019,
when the Rhonda Flowers' case was filed.
The accusations are quite damning.
When you start hearing police officers say,
we've resigned, we've quit, we've walked away
because of unethical conduct, constitutional violations,
this has to be something serious.
We can turn the tables on them
and get the jury to focus on the Police Department.
Since we know the prosecution will be calling officers as witnesses.
Next step, alert Melanie to this,
and I anticipate her and I are gonna be having a little pow wow
in the office tomorrow to talk about where we go from here.
-Hey. -Hey.
You ready to talk about Nowata?
I've been looking through the reports,
um, to try to see how
these police officer departures may or may not affect our case.
I found Captain Frauenberger's resignation letter.
"It's with a heavy heart that I must inform you
of my immediate resignation from the Nowata Police Department.
We had a meeting with the city manager
regarding things that were not only illegal,
but also questioned the integrity of our leadership."
-Distrust? -Yes.
-Illegal actions? -Mm-hmm.
-Violation of confidence. -Mm-hmm.
Wow.
And now, don't we have five police officers we can call to the stand?
Yeah.
The implications that this could have
for our case are substantial.
We've got five officers saying very similar things about the same individual.
Um, and that individual at Rhonda's trial
is going to be the star witness for the state.
He's going to be the witness that oversaw this entire investigation.
The state has to prove guilt beyond all reasonable doubt.
And so my job usually is to create doubt,
um, in the minds of the jurors.
These five officers writing these resignation letters,
I can use that to create doubt into this whole investigation.
MELANIE: I, I don't see how this does not change
the trajectory of this case.
-Hi, Rhonda. -Hello. Good to see you.
-Come on back. -Mm-hmm.
-Grab a seat. -Okay.
-Well, we have some news. -Right.
So the prosecution has come to us,
they've made an offer.
As you know, right now we're facing
first degree manslaughter charges.
And if we go to trial and we lose,
you can get potentially up to the rest of your life
behind bars as a convicted felon.
They have offered to amend
your charge from a manslaughter
down to misdemeanor, negligent homicide.
If you decided to take that, you'd be on one year probation.
As part of that probation, you would either do 90 days
in the Nowata County Jail,
or 60 days at an inpatient rehab facility.
Um...
No felony convictions on your record
and not one single minute behind bars.
Yeah.
You know you, we can say that,
but you're in your own...
I've spent four years in my own set of bars.
I mean, really.
And I'll never, you know, just never get over,
you know, what happened. And, um...
I mean, we've, we've got a decision to make.
You can say, "No, I want to go to jury trial."
Uh, and if that's what you say
that you want to do, that's what we'll do.
So here's another factor to consider
when you're making your decision.
We also do have, remember, the trailing misdemeanor DUI,
-which has still never been resolved to this day. -Mm-hmm.
The DUI is gonna be wrapped up along with this deal as well.
It's not gonna add a single day to your probation,
you're not going to go to jail for it.
Both of those two will be on my record.
As misdemeanors, yes.
Do I need to make this decision by tomorrow
or what are we, what's the plan?
Um, you let me know tomorrow. You can think about it.
You can process.
And if you decide that you wanna take this,
I can make that announcement for you in court tomorrow. Okay?
-That's what I'll do. -All right.
JASON: I can't say for sure why the state made this plea offer.
I can speculate,
but that's what it would be, it would be speculation.
However, her case kept getting stronger
and stronger and stronger, in my opinion,
and I've got to think that that had some aid,
in the prosecution coming at us
with this final offer that they made.
It's one of the best plea offers I've received
in all my years of practicing law.
To go from where we started
to what's being offered now, is quite incredible.
However, she may just feel
that she needs to be completely vindicated,
and that she needs to hear
those two beautiful words,
"not guilty" by a jury
and walk out completely exonerated.
Ultimately, she has to make that choice.
RHONDA: Every time I come here, it's just a big reminder.
It's either taking my chance and going to trial
or this 60-day rehab and the probation.
I've made the decision to, to take the 60-day rehab
and the one year probation.
This option would not be on the table
with trial and with 12 people, you'd, I have no way to know.
I'm so ready for the pressure to be off.
BILL: Well...
RHONDA: Over.
BILL: Over. RHONDA: Over.
Over. Over. Over.
JO: Oh, I'm so happy!
(EXCLAIMING)
So happy.
-It's been a fight. It's been a battle. -Yes.
-I'm just glad that you finally get some closure. -Oh, yes.
-It's been a long time coming. -JO: Yeah.
To, to be accused of something that took the life of my mother,
uh, you know, it's just hard to stand there and say guilty to that.
But that's, it's the process.
I feel like Mother is going to be, uh...
able to rest now.
I feel like she's probably been stuck in an in between
because I feel like she's with me all the time.
So both of us,
I think we'll both be able to get some peace out of this.