Stepanek expects to be 'fully exonerated'
digg it!
Facebook
del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit
BY LORI PILGER / Lincoln Journal Star
A man who will be on Lancaster County ballots next week in an effort to be the next state senator for District 27 was in county court Tuesday on a DUI charge.
Charles Stepanek, 48, is set for trial in the term that starts May 28.
“I fully expect to be exonerated,” Stepanek said later Tuesday.
Police say Stepanek drove under the influence of marijuana in Lincoln on May 29, 2007.
Stepanek says he wasn’t under the influence of anything that day; he was experiencing a mental psychosis because of several setbacks.
He was lamenting a break in his 5½-year sobriety, the one-year anniversary of his father-in-law’s death and the loss of his position with the National Alliance on Mental Illness — Nebraska.
That morning, after a co-worker ripped into him, he left.
He ended up near Wilderness Ridge Golf Course. Police say Stepanek was seen naked at a convenience store near South 27th Street buying a pop, then later at the Sid Dillon car lot.
He got into his car again and ran it into a light pole, police said.
At Tuesday’s pre-trial hearing, Officer Jason Adams said he came up to Stepanek’s Ford Taurus just after the crash east of the car lot.
He says he saw a drug pipe on the passenger floorboard.
Adams said he searched the car and found another bag of marijuana in the trunk, wrapped up in a roadside emergency kit.
Stepanek later said he did have a small amount of marijuana in the trunk, that he’d broken his sobriety the weekend before.
But the day of the accident, he said, it wasn’t marijuana that led to the crash.
“I was not under the influence of anything,” he said.
Stepanek said he’d gotten his sobriety back “by all means.”
Deputy County Attorney Krista Hendrick filed three more charges — willful reckless driving, disturbing the peace and possession of drug paraphernalia— against him Tuesday.
A charge of possession of marijuana, which stemmed from the same incident, was dismissed to pretrial diversion.
“I think even in a case like this, the transparency is more important that anything else,” Stepanek said.
Next Tuesday, he faces Colby Coash and Dan Marvin in the primary election. Two candidates will advance to the general election in November.
Reach Lori Pilger at 473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com.
Publishing opinions about the guilt, innocence or character of the accused in open criminal cases can affect that person's constitutional right to a fair trial. For that reason, JournalStar.com has chosen not to accept user comments on this story.