Credibility, accountability highlighted

PALMER - A man, a woman and her two children were in the car. No one wore a seat belt. The 5-year-old girl in the back died after the car rolled. The question now in the courts: Who was driving?

Tuesday, the first time he addressed a group of potential Palmer Superior Court jurors, Josh Fannon, Shelly Maddux's attorney, clarified that while Maddux and Bruce Tice were sitting next to each other at the defendants' table, they are not together.

He had reason to do so. Maddux was charged April 13 with first-degree hindering prosecution, a class C felony.

On the other side of the table at the trial sat Bruce Tice, her ex-lover. He was charged with aggravated manslaughter (a class A felony), criminally negligent homicide, first-degree assault, two counts of reckless endangerment and driving under the influence after the Feb. 28, 2003, death of Maddux's daughter, Kristin Maddux.

Maddux told Alaska State Troopers at the scene and in subsequent interviews over the next year that she was driving. Tice, in the passenger seat of the 1983 Subaru station wagon, had a couple of beers. The kids were acting up in the back. When she turned around to discipline them, she veered sharply, causing the car to roll.

Fannon and Assistant District Attorney Bob Collins pointed out that Tice was present at all of these interviews.

A year later, just before a grand jury was scheduled to decide whether to indict the mother for the death of her child, Maddux told District Attorney Roman Kalytiak that Tice was the driver that day.

The prosecution brings four witnesses supporting Maddux's story. William and Ester Starkey said they saw a car driving "like a bat out of hell," Collins said. The car stopped at a trailer park. A man got out. He got back in and drove off. The Starkeys went for a walk. Twenty or 30 minutes later, they happened upon the crash scene.

When Kalytiak interviewed William Starkey, Maddux had not yet come forward.

"Whenever I saw that car, it was a man driving," Starkey allegedly told Kalytiak.

Jamie Kardash, Tice's cellmate at Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility, testified against Tice on Thursday. Tice admitted he was driving "s**t-faced" that day, that the car rolled, and he said he was planning to try to confuse Maddux in trial, according to Kardash.

Kardash has prior convictions for crimes of dishonesty. He has offered information to district attorneys several times before. For this testimony, the state has offered to halve the three-year term of imprisonment he faces for promoting contraband.

Collins said he was using the man's testimony because the case involved the death of a 5-year-old child.

Collins also said he would put Brenda Tice on the stand to testify that her brother Bruce "told her he did it trying to get a rise out of the kids."

From jail, Bruce Tice called Maddux eight times on or about March 30, 2004, two weeks before the scheduled grand-jury indictment. All calls to or from inmates are recorded. There was some sex talk between them. And there was some talk of the case: Maddux reported that she had talked to the district attorney. She told Tice she was going to tell the grand jury he was driving. She said she was doing it "for Kristin."

Tice was upset that she had gone to the DA without an attorney.

"Don't do the state's job for them," he reportedly said.

He did not admit that he was driving. Yet Collins and Fannon argued that his silence damned him.

It was "a rare occasion," Fannon said in his opening statement, that the prosecution and a defendant were on the same page.

Collins and Fannon agreed that Tice should accept responsibility for the death. They also agreed that Tice manipulated Maddux into remaining silent.

They differed, however, on Maddux's motivation for covering for her lover.

"This is a sad case where a mother, in order to cover for her boyfriend, diminished the death of her child," Collins said.

Fannon, however, spent more time painting Tice as a callous domestic abuser. During the eight phone calls, he noted, Tice never mentioned Kristin. After the crash, after Maddux tried unsuccessfully to revive her bloody child with CPR, Fannon said, "Bruce walks up to her … and gives her the story that she's going to tell the police when they come."

Fannon intends to prove that Maddux lied to law-enforcement officers because she was "under duress" and in fear of Tice's wrath.

"She didn't intend to commit the crime," he said.

Sheldon, in her brief opening statement, denied that Tice was driving recklessly or that he was intoxicated.

She characterized Tice as "a man trying desperately to keep his family together," and said that both parties were taking responsibility for the death. And she questioned Maddux's credibility, given her timing: She waited until the eve of her own potential grand-jury indictment to change her story, Sheldon said.

Sheldon did not allege that Maddux was driving. Instead, she emphasized that the state must prove otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt.

"None of us will ever know who was driving that car," she said.

Maddux, 31, was listed as a defendant in a 2000 domestic-violence case in Anchorage that was filed by her husband, Robert Maddux Jr., but never prosecuted. She has no prior adult convictions in Alaska.

Tice, 34, is a registered sex offender in Alaska for a 1994 Fairbanks conviction for second-degree sexual abuse of a minor, a charge to which he pleaded no contest. He pleaded no contest in 2002 to second-degree theft in Anchorage. He also has pleaded guilty to shoplifting, speeding, and twice to driving unlicensed.

Tice has been in jail continuously since Jan. 13, 2004, for violating probation conditions on a second-degree theft conviction. Since serving the 10 months that remained on that felony, he has been held for this pending case in lieu of $50,000 cash or corporate bond.

Contact Kate Golden at

352-2284 or kate.golden@

frontiersman.com.