OHIO INNOCENCE PROJECT Group loses fight for man convicted in fatal car crash

The man was not driving, the group argued.
CANTON (AP) -- A group of law students lost an effort to prove a man is innocent in a fatal drunken driving accident because he was a passenger, not the driver.
The University of Cincinnati students plan to appeal a judge's ruling that denied Christopher Bennett a new trial.
The students are members of Ohio Innocence Project, a law course that uses post-conviction DNA testing and other evidence in an attempt to exonerate convicted felons.
Bennett, 28, pleaded guilty to four charges, including aggravated vehicular homicide, in the May 29, 2001, accident that killed Ronnie Young, 42.
Authorities said Bennett and Young had been drinking most of the day and had blood alcohol levels that made them legally drunk when their van spun out of control and hit a parked truck in Paris Township near Canton.
Bennett, who suffered a tear in his brain, said he had trouble remembering anything about the accident.
He began serving a nine-year sentence Feb. 11, 2003, at Mansfield Correctional Institution.
Bennett said he gradually began to remember the crash and believes he was not driving.
New evidence
Project members argued that Bennett should be given a new trial because he had amnesia after the crash and was represented by an ineffective lawyer.
They presented a new witness who said he was the first person at the crash scene and found Bennett in the van's passenger seat with his arm hanging out the window.
The team also produced DNA evidence -- hair tufts and a blood-soaked paper towel from the passenger side that matched Bennett. Expert testimony from a crash reconstruction expert and a psychiatrist backed Bennett's claim that he wasn't the driver and had suffered amnesia.
County prosecutors used testimony from another crash reconstruction expert who placed Bennett as the driver, and a different witness from the crash scene who said Bennett was in the driver's seat.
Ruling
Stark County Common Pleas Judge Lee Sinclair ruled Thursday that Bennett could not withdraw his guilty plea.
In his decision, Sinclair focused on the fact that a doctor who treated Bennett after the crash did not diagnose him with amnesia.
Sinclair said the testimony of the psychiatrist who later did was "speculative."
"I think it's wrong. I think Christopher Bennett is innocent, and I think the evidence proved it," said project director Mark Godsey, who called the ruling "a setback."