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# Jury is still out on Weller case
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/jury-is-still-out-on-weller-case/
- Published: 2006-10-13T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T21:39:06.000Z
- Author: Kevin Herrera
- Tags: Crime, Downtown, #archive-import

*Farmers’ Market case a tough decision*

DOWNTOWN LA — Jurors are scheduled to hold a fourth full day of deliberations today in the criminal trial of George Russell Weller, the 89-year-old man who drove his car through a crowded Farmers’ Market in July 2003, killing 10 people and injuring 63 others.

The Los Angeles Superior Court panel got the case against Weller last Friday after hearing closing arguments from lawyers for both sides.

Weller, who was 86 at the time of the crash on Arizona Avenue on July 16, 2003, is charged with 10 counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence. If convicted on all counts, he could face up to 18 years in prison.

Jurors have the option of finding Weller guilty of a lesser charge — vehicular manslaughter with negligence, a misdemeanor.

In her closing argument, Deputy District Attorney Ann Ambrose said failure to convict Weller of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence would be akin to saying the man was guilty of nothing more than making a mistake when he drove his Buick LaSabre through the open-air market in downtown Santa Monica.

Defense attorneys countered that Weller accidentally stepped on the car’s accelerator instead of the brake, a case of “pedal error.”

Defense attorney Mark Overland argued that the prosecution’s case was built on questionable testimony from a select number of witnesses whose comments were tailored to fit the prosecution’s theory that Weller was able to see, steer and stop the vehicle, and could have prevented the carnage he ultimately caused.

Of the hundreds who witnessed the event, only a select few were chosen to testify, and their testimony, based on events three years ago, was questionable, Overland contend-ed. He noted the discrepancy in the testimony of certain witnesses on the stand and in statements they made to police at the scene.

“So what do you do with all this, do you pick and choose what fits your theory or do you look at all the evidence?” he asked the jurors.

In her rebuttal, Ambrose described the defense’s tactics as a sleight-of-hand designed to divert jurors’ attention away from the criminal conduct of Weller.

“He spent two hours yesterday talking about everyone other than the defendant,” she told jurors.“He roared at you so you wouldn’t look at the truth, the truth that Mr. Weller’s conduct killed 10 innocent people.”

Referring to one witness Overland attempted to discredit because she was the only one who claimed to have seen Weller brake before entering the market, Ambrose said that only bolstered the prosecution’s case.

“That’s the problem, he never applied his brakes in the market,” she said. And despite the defense’s claim -- backed by some high-paid,“so-called,”defense experts — that Weller made a pedal error sending him into a “hypervigilant brain freeze,” that didn’t legally absolve the man of guilt, she said.

“Just because it’s an accident doesn’t mean there’s no crime,” she said.“You can’t then use your negligence as an excuse.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 13, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/101306.pdf?ref=smdp.com)