Jury acquits New Franken man of negligent homicide By Jessica La Plante News-Chronicle A Brown County jury acquitted a New Franken man Thursday of homicide charges in the traffic-accident death a 17-year-old girl. Spending little more than three hours mulling over two days of testimony, the jury determined 52-year-old Timothy Ferral shouldn't be labeled a felon just because he failed to yield, which caused the accident. Ferral was charged with homicide by negligent operation of a vehicle and injury by reckless driving. Since Ferral's trial started Tuesday, defense attorney Brian Maloney told the jury his client was responsible for the July 2002 crash that killed 17-year-old Laura Deprez and left her mother severely injured. The jury was asked to decide just how irresponsible Ferral's driving was. Prosecutors contended Ferral consciously chose to run a stop sign at the intersection of County T and K in the town of Scott, and then lied about it to police. Brown County District Attorney John Zakowski said the act rose to the level of criminal negligence. During closing arguments, he said that just because people don't intend the results of their actions doesn't mean they shouldn't be held responsible for the outcome. Maloney called the accident a mistake that could happen to "any one of us," reminding the jury it was not a case where the driver had been using drugs or alcohol. He said the only thing his client allegedly did wrong was run a stop sign, something that should be reserved for civil lawsuits, not criminal felony trials. "A not-guilty verdict is not saying that Timothy Ferral did nothing wrong," Maloney said. "What it's saying, is that while Tim Ferral made a mistake, he doesn't belong in criminal court." The jury heard testimony from crash reconstructionists, the defendant and the mother of the 17-year-old victim. Experts called by the prosecution testified it was unlikely the defendant stopped at the intersection based on tire marks left at the scene and their calculations of the car's speed before impact. Testifying Wednesday, Ferral claimed he slowed down before reaching the stop sign, looked both ways, and then proceeded into the intersection. "I never saw her coming," he testified. As the verdict was announced Thursday afternoon, Julie Ferral cried and hugged her husband. "I want everyone to know that when a tragedy like this happens, there's two families suffering," she said. Although the acquittal means Ferral won't face prison time, he said the verdict doesn't relieve the pain of knowing the accident claimed a girl's life. "There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about her and how this accident happened," Ferral said. "I wished it had been me that perished and not her." For Viola Deprez, the memory of her daughter's abrupt death weighs heavily on her mind. "It will never go away," Viola Deprez said. "(She) just got her senior pictures taken three days before the accident and got her braces off." According to both prosecutors and defense attorneys, the Ferral case was the first time an accident charged under Wisconsin's negligent homicide laws went to trial in Brown County court. Although a driver was charged with the felony crime in 2000, the case was settled when the woman entered a guilty plea. Zakowski said the trial presented a unique challenge for jurors because it required them to not only absorb new facts, but relate those facts to a legal concept that rarely surfaces in criminal law. "This was a very difficult and tragic case," Zakowski said. "We believed the evidence showed somebody made a conscious decision to run a stop sign at a dangerous intersection. Is that type of negligence criminal negligence? This jury apparently said it isn't."