Column: Wild girl Williams headed for one-size-fits-all justice

It has been a bad year for wild girls in Las Vegas.

Anyone who has managed not to slip into a coma knows the tale of one-time topless dancer Sandy Murphy and her conviction in the drug-and-suffocation murder of heroin-stoked casino man Ted Binion.

It is the stuff of which legends are made. Murphy is now serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole.

Murphy played her vamp-in-Versace image to the hilt, and in the end it helped sink her. She surely qualifies as the queen of the wild girls around these parts.

Then there are the sad, strange stories of exotic dancers Jessica Williams, 21, and Juanita Kim McDonald, 24. The women are accused of driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol when they ran down pedestrians, killing seven in all and injuring three others.

On March 19, a van Williams was driving on Interstate 15 drifted into the median and plowed through teen-agers who were working on a county-sponsored trash collection crew. Five were killed at the scene, and a sixth died in a hospital. On April 19, the car McDonald was driving on the Strip near the Aladdin construction site jumped a curb and struck four pedestrians. One of those lingered in a coma 18 days before dying.

Admit it: It's easy to want to lump the two dancers into the same category as Murphy. "They might not have intended to hurt anyone when they got behind the wheel," you think to yourself, "but they're little more than hookers whose fast lives caught up to them. They're trash. Lock 'em up and throw away the key."

Society, I'll wager, already has judged and convicted Williams and McDonald. Not for what they've done, but for how they earn a living.

The justice system is supposed to work differently. These defendants are supposed to get their day in court, reasonable bail, a fair trial before an impartial jury, a just verdict and, if convicted, a sentence that fits the crime.

For her part, Williams sits in jail with no hope of raising the dollars needed to post her $5 million bail. Mafia dons don't get whacked with bail that high, but that hasn't generated a whisper of protest. When I think of that bail figure, the image of Murphy - then accused of suffocating her live-in lover - prancing around in her painted house-arrest ankle bracelet comes to mind.

I wonder, too, where Williams' lawyer, John Watkins, will find a jury of her peers. Not 20-something nude dancers, but persons even remotely familiar with the wide use of marijuana in our country. Juries tend to be older and more conservative. How many of Williams' jurors will understand how a young person would abstain from drinking alcohol but indulge in pot-smoking and occasional drug use and not be ome whacked-out zombie from the set of "Reefer Madness"?

District Judge Mark Gibbons, known as one of the shining lights on the local bench, will preside over a case that is sure to be watched extremely closely by well-intentioned citizens groups out to stop people from driving under the influence. Those citizens not only generate attention from the media but are known to aggressively criticize judges they deem to be soft on offenders. Gibbons' sense of fairness will be tested should the Williams case reach trial.

Although she tested positive for the presence of two illegal drugs in her system, was Jessica Williams actually impaired that March day? Or did Williams, as she and independent witnesses say, fall asleep at the wheel?

Watkins is preparing his legal argument that Nevada law, as it addresses the issue of impairment in cases involving controlled substances rather than alcohol use, is wildly inaccurate.

Will Watkins find a sympathetic ear on the Nevada Supreme Court?

For all their integrity and courage, our Supreme Court justices are also elected officials who serve at the whim of the voter. Doing the right thing in the face of political pressure is never easy.

Should the Jessica Williams case reach trial, we will have the opportunity to learn a great deal.

Not about the life of a wild girl, but about our own sense of justice.

John L. Smith's column appears Wednesday. Reach him at (702) 383-0295 or Smith@lasvegas.com