Attorneys provided closing arguments Tuesday afternoon in the retrial for 25-year-old Dustin Ruckman.
Ruckman faces two counts of criminally negligent homicide for his involvement in a 2019 crash on top of Unalaska’s Mount Ballyhoo. Ruckman was driving near the top of the mountain when his truck plummeted about 900 feet down a cliff. Two local teen girls were thrown from the truck as it fell.
16-year-old Karly McDonald and 18-year-old Kiara Renteria Haist died in the wreck.
For the second time, a jury will attempt to decide if Ruckman — who was 18 at the time of the crash — is guilty of criminal charges for the deaths of the girls. He told police he was thrown from the truck as well, and sustained minor injuries.
About a year ago, an Anchorage jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision and Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews declared a mistrial.
Over the last couple weeks, a new group of Anchorage jurors has heard witness and expert testimony as parties regathered in hopes of reaching a verdict.
The second trial has gone more quickly than the previous one. The state officially rested its case on Tuesday morning after discussions about jury instructions and a motion of acquittal, which Judge Matthews denied. He then handed the case over to jurors to deliberate.
Representing the state, prosecutor John Skidmore kicked off closing arguments Tuesday afternoon.
“This is a case about the recklessness of youth,” Skidmore began, echoing a line from his opening statement.
He told jurors about the risk of driving on a portion of the road near the edge of Ulakta Head Cliff, at or near where Ruckman’s truck fell, showing images of the steep cliff and rocky beaches below.
“The sign that's posted that says you need to stay away from the edge. Why? Because it's dangerous on foot…it's dangerous on foot,” Skidmore told the jury. “And if it's dangerous on foot, then you can rest assured, it's also dangerous to be that close to the edge in a vehicle.”
In this trial, as in the first, the discussion focused largely on whether Ruckman’s actions can be considered criminally negligent. Skidmore argued they can be — that Ruckman failed to perceive the risk or acted recklessly.
“Ruckman is aware of what that risk is,” he said. “He chose to consciously disregard. And the only question left for you all to answer — do you think that's a gross deviation from the standard that should be observed?”
Defense attorney Julia Moudy took the podium next, arguing that the state lacked sufficient evidence to prove criminal liability.
She said Ruckman’s actions were not a gross deviation from the standard of care, and that the risk of driving in the area was only perceived by the community after the crash.
“If that risk was so prevalent that Dustin Ruckman — 18-year-old Dustin Ruckman — should have known about that risk, then so should everybody who lived there, everybody who owned that property, everybody who had a voice, the parents whose children were going up there and driving up there — ‘do something. Kids are going to die’,” Moudy said.
Moudy said that decisions about criminal liability can’t be made in hindsight. She argued that the community had accepted the risk of driving in the area, rather than condemning it.
“The state has not presented one bit of evidence, not even one witness who said, ‘we don't drive in that area in this community — that is not acceptable in our community, and I've told those kids not to do that,’” Moudy told jurors.
She said that the state’s argument relies solely on the geography or location of the area where Ruckman allegedly drove his truck.
“Don't let them fool you into thinking that the geography alone makes it a crime,” Moudy said.
Moudy said that despite hiring a crash reconstructionist expert, the prosecution never called that person to the stand to provide more details on what was happening when Ruckman’s truck fell from the cliff.
She said the state didn’t present anything beyond what the lead investigator already knew shortly after the crash. Moudy concluded her argument with a clip of the investigator, an Unalaska police officer, telling jurors earlier in the trial that the information she had initially, before consulting experts, wasn’t enough to determine whether or not a crime had been committed.
Skidmore finished off closing arguments with a rebuttal.
“Defense counsel has argued to you and submitted the idea that somehow the law requires that the defendant was placed on notice that he shouldn't be driving in that location,” he said. “That is not what the law says.”
Skidmore told jurors to return to the evidence to determine what the standard of a reasonable person, not the entire community, would be.
Judge Matthews provided jury instructions before handing the case over to the group of jurors Tuesday afternoon.
In the previous trial, the jury deliberated for about three days before submitting their deadlocked verdict.
