DARLINGTON — The jury reached a “standstill” on a sixth-offense drunken driving case last month in Lafayette County Circuit Court, and the judge ruled it a mistrial.
The defendant, Patricia E. Hexom, 55, Darlington, has five convictions on her record of operating while intoxicated, from June 1991, October 1993, October 1996, March 2004 and April 2013. She was sentenced for the most recent offense, in Rock County, to one year and eight months in prison and one year and six months on extended supervision.
She pleaded not guilty last year to her sixth OWI, a Class G felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison, and took the case to trial May 28.
But, after a day of hearing testimony and arguments, jurors wrote a note to the judge that they were “at a standstill without reaching 100% consensus.”
“No one is being obstinate, irrational or stubborn,” the note continued. “All jurors believe in their hearts and minds” that where they fall, guilty or not guilty, “is the right reason they have made based in the court instructions given to the jury.”
The presiding judge, Jill Karofsky, ruled it a mistrial. A new trial is scheduled for October.
The case against Hexom stems from an incident on Wisconsin 23 outside Darlington on May 27, 2018.
According to court records, a deputy found Hexom walking along the side of the highway. Hexom told the deputy she had been a passenger in a car accident nearby. She said the driver left the scene so she decided to walk back to Dar-lington.
She told the deputy she had been drinking at Mike’s Corner Bar in Darlington and knew she was too intoxicated to drive so she asked a man she met at the bar named “Shawn” to drive her. She described him as tall and “handsome,” with blond curly hair.
When the deputy went to the bar to investigate, no one reported seeing anyone matching that description. Witnesses told the deputy Hexom left the bar alone.
Later the same day, according to police, Hexom confessed to driving and to lying earlier because she didn’t want to go back to prison for another OWI.
District Attorney Jenna Gill brought in four people to testify at the trial: Michael Bolton, the owner of Mike’s Corner Bar; Scott Garthwaite, a bartender at Mike’s Corner Bar; Officer Nicholas Mantsch of the Darlington Police Department; and Lafayette County Deputy Steven Schultz.
No one saw Hexom driving the vehicle in question, but “the officers testified that she admitted that she was driving,” Gill said.
Earlier this year, Hexom pleaded no contest to a felony bail jumping charge related to the same incident, as she had been under bond conditions not to drink at the time. She was sentenced to six months in jail and two years on probation. She was also fined for traffic citations related to the accident, including operating left of center, failure to keep a vehicle under control and resisting an officer.