I don't know.
- For close to ten years,
Katie Garding has been in prison
for a New Year's hit-and-run homicide.
- Katie was a young single mother
who, by her own admission,
was out drinking and driving that night.
- I didn't commit this crime,
and there's somebody out there that did,
and they've taken my life away, they've taken my family away.
- Driving down that road, you are in a deadly weapon.
That hood hitting a human being, you have no chance.
- I just didn't buy her story.
There's no doubt in my mind that she did it.
- But her supporters say there was no physical evidence
that proves that her vehicle was involved in the hit-and-run.
- And that's the issue, is,
there's no damage to her vehicle.
- So what ultimately put her behind bars?
- A snitch.
It lessened his time in prison significantly.
- Katie Garding was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
- It's one of the harshest sentences ever received
for a vehicular homicide.
- Forty years is a number you don't even see
in premeditated, intentional murder cases.
- Now there is a hearing coming up.
It'll be her only chance at getting a new trial.
This is a huge opportunity for her to prove her innocence
and be reunited with her family.
- I feel robbed of my mom.
- We don't have much time, and that's why we're here,
is to uncover the facts of this case
to see if Katie Garding, in fact, hit somebody and ran,
or did they get the wrong person?
But we gotta get the ball rolling,
and it starts now.
Five years in prison for a crime I didn't commit.
- Eighteen years as a criminal prosecutor.
As a team, we will examine cases
of convicted killers who claim they are innocent.
- Are they victims, or are they criminals?
We will follow the facts wherever they lead us.
Since my exoneration, I have reviewed hundreds
of cases of people proclaiming their innocence,
but Katie Garding's case stands out
because what happened to her could happen to anyone.
- This happened early New Year's Day 2008,
at 1:40 in the morning.
The victim is Bronson Parsons.
He's out celebrating New Year's Eve with his friend,
walking down the side of a highway,
and all of a sudden...
Bronson Parsons is hit from behind by a car,
and then the car takes off, hit-and-run,
and Bronson dies from his injuries.
Bronson's friend, Dan Barry, tells the police
that it's a dark SUV.
They were getting a lot of tips
from people-- citizens, saying,
well, they think they know who it was.
They followed up on those tips,
it didn't go anywhere,
so they kind of let the case sit
for almost a year
until they had this jailhouse informant tip
that brought up Katie Garding.
- In this picture, she's 15.
Just gave birth to a baby.
And she was how old when this crime happened?
- Twenty-one.
It was her first
New Year's Eve of being 21
and being able to drink.
She's out partying with her boyfriend, James Bordeaux,
and this other random guy that they pick up,
and she admits she was drinking.
She says, "I was driving a dark SUV,
"I've been drinking,
but I didn't hit anybody that night."
But James Bordeaux, Katie's boyfriend,
points a finger at her, and despite her saying,
"No, I didn't do it,"
the jury apparently believed him.
Katie ends up getting convicted,
and she's given the maximum sentence--
40 years.
First time ever that someone was given
the maximum sentence for those charges in Montana.
- One thing I can say is,
she's currently being represented
by the Montana Innocence Project,
and they're saying that they have
newly discovered evidence that proves her innocence.
- This is critical for her,
because that's it.
In Montana, you get this one chance
to get a new trial, and then you're done.
- If Katie is truly innocent
and we can find something that can prove that,
we need to do it now.
- Hello. Lori?
Hi. Loni Coombs.
- This is a huge opportunity for her to prove her innocence
and be reunited with her family.
The stakes are higher than ever.
Tell us about Katie.
- Katie's the youngest of four, so... my baby.
Never gave us any problems whatsoever.
And then she had her son, Carson, at a very young age,
which was a big shock to all of us.
- How did she adjust to being a mother at the age of 15?
- Not very well.
I don't think she realized the responsibility.
- Still trying to find her way in life
and grow and, you know.
You know, we gave her that choice of,
"If you want to leave Carson here with us, we'll raise him."
- And she always made the right choice.
It was always about the best care for Carson.
- Do you recall when Katie first realized that she had been
prime suspect in a hit-and-run case?
- Yeah, I remember, she looked me right in the eyes,
and she said, "Dad, I didn't do it."
- When the trial started, I think we all walked in there
thinking that there was no way they were gonna find her guilty.
- And then when he pronounced her with the maximum sentence,
40 years, I couldn't believe it.
- It was devastating.
- It still is. - Still is.
- She looked at us, she looked lost, like,
"Wow, what am I gonna do?"
- So much pain in her face.
And as a mother, you know, you just feel helpless,
knowing that she's gonna have to walk this walk.
- Katie stands convicted of a very serious crime,
and we really have no idea of what happened that night,
so when I sit down with Katie,
I'm gonna press her on the facts.
- Hi. - How you doing?
- Hi, good, how are you? - Good. Brian Banks.
- Nice to meet you. - I'm Loni Coombs.
- Katie.
- Your fam come out to visit you?
- About once a month.
My parents have always supported me,
always been there for me and my son.
- Good, good.
- So, 2007 into 2008,
what was going on in your life at that point?
- I was working in Missoula at the Kum & Go as a sales manager.
I actually met James working at the Kum & Go store,
which is crazy because I wasn't even supposed to work
that night, so it was almost like destiny
that all of this had happened.
- So tell us about New Year's Eve 2007.
- So James and I partied at a couple bars,
and then this guy Paul had come up to us,
and he was looking for people to party with.
We did the New Year's Eve countdown
and then decided to go to Red's Bar in Missoula.
- Mm-hmm. - Paul was with us.
We got to the bar,
and I had actually parked on the curb,
and there was street patrol out.
The officer had come up to me,
and he had asked me if I was drinking,
and of course I told him, I was like, "Oh, no, I'm fine."
And he said, "Well, you can't drive your vehicle
for the rest of the night, or I'm giving you a DUI."
You know, I wasn't gonna argue with him,
so we closed the truck up
and went inside and closed the bar down.
Like, the lights went on and everything,
and that's when we left.
- What happened after you left?
- Well, I was actually planning on driving my vehicle
because I had been driving all night,
but James was on the run from Missouri,
so he had warrants.
- Oh.
- So he was like, "No, I'm not getting in that truck with you."
And so Paul said that we could go home and stay with him,
so we actually took Paul's truck and went home with him.
- What happens the next morning?
- Paul took us back to my vehicle
right in front of Red's Bar,
and then James and I had went and ate breakfast at McDonald's.
- Had you heard anything about the hit-and-run
that had happened the night before?
- No. No, I wasn't aware of that.
- So now it's the end of 2008.
We're going into 2009.
What's going on in your life?
- I wound up getting back together
with my ex-boyfriend, the one that--
we had a long-term relationship, and I had broke up with him--
and we were just kind of seeing each other.
And then I got charged.
- That's a year and a half after New Year's.
- Correct.
They had asked me if I had hit somebody
out in East Missoula, and I had said no,
and they said, "Well, what would you think about
"us telling you that James is saying
that you had hit somebody," and I said, "Well,
I don't know why he would do that,"
'cause we quit talking about a year before that.
- And when they questioned you,
did you tell them that you had been driving that night?
- Yes, and then I told them that I had been drinking
and that we had smoked marijuana.
- Okay. So you were very open about all of that.
- Yeah. Before I was actually charged,
the state offered me a plea agreement.
It was five years suspended.
I would have never even came to prison.
- Wow.
- And I said, "No, I'm not gonna plead
to something that I didn't do."
- And then the judge ended up saying,
"You're going to trial."
How did you feel about your attorney?
Do you think that she did a good job in the trial?
- I think she fought hard,
but I also think that she made a big mistake
by not doing an accident reconstruction,
which I believe would've changed the jury's verdict.
- And then, when you go to the sentencing,
what went through your mind?
- I mean, I was stressed out,
and I didn't understand why.
I just remember, like, looking at the victim's family
and telling them that "I didn't kill your son.
It wasn't me." - Mm-hmm.
- And I looked at all the jury,
and I remember telling them, just, that I'm innocent.
- I'm going to meet
with Katie's original defense attorney,
Jennifer Streano-- I want to ask Jennifer,
why does she think she lost the case?
So take me back.
You're a public defender, and you are the one
that becomes Katie Garding's defense attorney.
What was your impression of her?
- Very sweet. Very young.
Very naive.
I'd also put myself in that same position
at that time.
I just remember feeling constantly overwhelmed.
I was too focused on James Bordeaux
and discrediting his statement,
and that distracted me
from looking at the accident itself.
That was just an enormous error, I think, on my part.
- Tell me about what happened in the courtroom
when they said "guilty."
- It was horrible.
I still just feel it.
I felt, if she can be convicted,
on nothing, really,
then it must be my fault.
I went to my supervisor and tried to resign.
- Over this? - Yeah.
- This case? This conviction?
- Yeah.
He wouldn't accept the resignation
and just said, "Take some time."
There was just so much lack of evidence.
I mean, she didn't have any damage
to the vehicle or anything. - Yeah.
- Katie's vehicle was stopped the next day
by a police officer
because he said it fit the description,
and there was no damage to her vehicle,
so it wasn't like they had any time to,
you know, repair it or anything like that.
- And the trooper that did that stop
was actually looking for suspect vehicles for the hit-and-run.
- Exactly.
And we do have a video of that.
- Here's a picture
of Katie Garding's SUV.
Just a crack on the windshield,
which was there when she bought the car.
- I don't see any dents
in the front end of this vehicle.
I don't see any broken glass.
It doesn't look like a car that took somebody's life.
- Katie was actually stopped by one of the troopers
investigating this hit-and-run 12 hours after the crash.
There's actually dash cam video of this.
What we're gonna see is Katie Garding's dark SUV.
- Right. Right. Okay.
- They're looking for the vehicle from last night.
- This officer, Officer Hader,
he is one of the lead investigators
on their Bronson Parsons hit-and-run.
We see his partner walk up to the front,
kind of by the grille.
- Nothing jumped out and made them think
this car could have been involved
in an accident last night.
- They let her go.
- Insane.
- We have another dash cam video.
This one's actually from the night of the hit-and-run.
So, the police, they arrived on the scene,
and apparently, Dan Barry, the victim's friend,
who was there next to him when this happened,
sits in the patrol car and makes some phone calls.
- He just got hit.
He just got carried away by a car.
Looking at this vehicle,
I don't see any damage at all
that represents that.
So right up ahead is the actual crime scene itself.
- Okay. - All right.
So, setting the scene,
it's about 1:40 a.m.
Bronson and his friend Dan
got a couple beers in hand,
and they're walking within this walk space here.
This is where this car swerves off the road
into-- past the fog line
and strikes Bronson.
Bronson was hit and dropped his beer can.
And his body was sent 90 feet.
- From the beer can area. - From the beer can.
Ninety feet. - Okay.
- Look at the point of impact!
That's a long-ass way, right?
- Yeah. - I mean, that's insane.
But even crazier is this:
his shoes were found 150 feet away
from the point of impact.
- Wow!
Well, and Daniel Barry said
that this car was going really fast.
I mean, he-- I think he estimated,
like, 60 miles an hour.
Hit his friend, carried his friend,
dropped his friend, and then took off.
- And took off.
So how did Katie become a suspect?
- Well, a year after the crime occurred,
investigators get this tip from a jailhouse informant
that leads them
to James Bordeaux and Katie Garding.
The police find James Bordeaux, who is in custody.
James had this burglary charge against him,
and his attorney says, "Because they've charged you
"as a persistent felony offender,
you're looking at a sentence of five to 100 years."
- Really?
- And his attorney says, "They've been trying
"to talk to you about this hit-and-run.
Let's see if you can talk to 'em."
He was offered the deal of five years probation,
but it was contingent on him testifying against Katie.
- The old "snitch for a deal."
- But then there's that third person in the car, Paul.
- Well, what does Paul say?
- Well, Paul testifies for the defense.
He says they have last call,
and then they end up leaving in Paul's truck,
and he says that they never hit anybody.
- Paul says nobody got hit? - Yeah.
- So we got two versus one. - Yeah.
When James testifies against Katie at trial,
his version of what happened really doesn't differ much
from what Katie says happened that night.
It's what takes place from the point
where the lights go on at Red's Bar,
what happens after that, is where the two stories differ.
- The lights went on and everything,
and that's when we left.
Paul said that we could go home and stay with him,
so we actually took Paul's truck and went home with him.
- In his testimony, James says they left Red's
after the last call, which is--
- Okay. About 1:30.
- About 1:30.
He says, in Katie's vehicle,
James is in the passenger seat,
Katie's driving, Paul's in the back seat.
They were looking for drugs.
James says, "I was telling her to pull over.
"I spin around.
"I see a person flying through the air.
"Then we start a-- kind of in a panic,
"about what to do,
"so we took the truck back to Red's
"for an alibi and hauled ass to Paul's house
in his truck."
I think we have to test what he said.
They leave Red's about 1:30.
Could Katie have been at the point of the hit-and-run
at the time that it happened?
- Right. - About 1:40 in the morning?
- Ten minutes sounds like not enough time.
That is a lot of driving.
- We've gotta drive it ourselves.
So you're in the seat where Katie was.
I'm where James was.
- Okay, well, here's 200, right here.
- They're looking for coke.
Paul has a friend in East Missoula
that deals coke.
Right now,
we're looking for the drug house.
This was the drug house. - Okay.
- They drive by, look...
- Lights are off. - He's not home.
They leave, and at this point,
he says there's an argument going on between he and Paul.
It's getting loud, and he's now telling Katie
to pull over, pull over.
James says she wasn't looking at the road.
What happens?
"And that's when we hit the guy."
Where are we?
- We are about to be at the point of impact.
- Okay. - In three.
Two.
One.
Now.
- 14:42.
- That is not ten minutes.
- It's much closer than I thought it would be.
James Bordeaux never gave exact times
and said over and over again,
"I was drinking. I'm guessing as to the times."
- But that's why I just don't understand
how we allow somebody to be tried in court
with information that's not concrete,
allowing the jury to make a decision
based on intuition and not facts.
- Katie's defense attorney went through
on cross-examination
and pointed out all of the inconsistencies,
and 12 people decided that it was okay.
Looking at the evidence in this case,
I'm really curious to know what the jurors saw
as compelling to prove Katie's guilt
beyond a reasonable doubt.
When you first went into the jury room,
did you take an initial vote
to see how everybody was feeling
just right off the bat?
- I recall it being about ten to two
for innocence.
- Wow.
- I was one of the two
that felt that she was guilty at the onset,
and there's no doubt in my mind that she did it.
A lot of it came from her own testimony.
She just did not come off as genuine to me.
It was a lot of "poor me, not me."
- Yeah. Seemed like she had a bit of an attitude.
She just would sit there
with her hand on the table like this
or almost kind of bored.
- Let me ask about James Bordeaux.
Her boyfriend at the time testified.
Was he believable?
What did you think of his testimony?
- As odd as it sounds,
I found him more honest-feeling than her,
and she got on the stand,
she just didn't convince me at all
that what she was saying was true.
- One of the things that helped solidify my opinion was,
when they did the autopsy, there was a certain amount
of heavy bruising on, like, his lower legs.
That seemed to very closely resemble
height size of that bar on the car.
- That was the fingerprint of the vehicle
left on his body.
- You have to try to think, "Okay, what are the chances
that somebody else has the same type of bumper?"
- The testimony about the victim's body was,
from the point of impact, his body landed 90 feet.
Did you guys have any questions
about how that could have happened
and whether this is the car that could have done that?
- No one really discussed that.
You know, it was never really presented
one way or the other.
But to me, it was that vehicle.
She admitted she was driving it.
It was pretty unique.
To throw her testimony into that
and the way she acted,
it just all added up to me.
- The prosecution made
a very eloquent argument
saying, "Look, this bumper, this unique custom-made bumper,
matches the exact injuries right there on his legs."
The physical evidence of the victim's injuries
were actually fairly minimal.
He had this wound to the back of his head,
and he also had these tears in the muscles in his calves.
- These two can't happen without the other.
- Exactly. It's that bumper that caused these injuries.
Because of those minimal injuries,
they started to theorize
that the car was going slower than 60 miles an hour,
more likely 20 miles an hour, which does not match
the description that Dan Barry gave.
But the prosecution pointed out
Dan Barry had been drinking.
We can't take Dan Barry's statement at full value.
- You know, Loni, I'm hearing
what the prosecution brought to this case,
but from playing football, I just know,
if you hit something from a low angle,
you have to expect
it would send his body backwards.
And Dan Barry said, "I saw my friend..."
"...Swept by a vehicle,
and he saw his hands fly back.
And unless Parsons was 3 feet tall
and his body could never see over the hood of this vehicle,
there has to be some type of damage.
I'm just not buying the fact
that you put this unique bumper on the front
and it's just gonna protect the whole front end
of your vehicle from anything
that stands in its way.
We gotta see this vehicle.
- After Katie was convicted,
her parents hired their own private investigator,
and after the trial, he was able to track down
the actual vehicle that Katie Garding was driving
the night that Bronson Parsons was hit and killed.
- So this is Katie's vehicle.
- This? - This is it.
- And as you can see, there's really no damage here.
These two were cut away,
the law enforcement did, for testing.
The rest of it is as it would've been
when Katie owned it.
- You know, this piece of steel
has continuously keep coming up as,
"This could have protect the front end of this vehicle."
You know, I could understand
if this was sitting here in the middle.
- Sure. - That'd be one thing.
But to have this at the bottom--
- Mm-hmm. - With all of this exposed.
To say that his body didn't cause any injury to the vehicle
is impossible. - Right.
As you can see, this plastic grille is unbroken.
And it's not very stable.
- Yeah, it's not. I mean, look, I moved it.
Boy, it's like, look at the hood.
It's not-- it's not flexible enough
to absorb the impact without showing damage, is it?
- No. Unlike plastic that will pop back,
if that metal gets crushed in, it's gonna stay there.
It bothers me that jurors sent a girl to prison for 40 years
with this much reasonable doubt.
I'm not sure how anybody can look at this vehicle
and have a question in their mind,
"Could this vehicle have hit this guy?"
Where is the damage?
That's reasonable doubt.
- Based on what we've learned now,
I think the lack of any damage to the car
raises reasonable doubt.
But at this stage for Katie,
reasonable doubt isn't enough.
Katie has a hearing coming up.
I want to see what evidence the defense attorneys have
that they're going to present to the judge
to say that she deserves a new trial,
because strategy-wise, they only get one chance
at making this argument to the judge.
So, the arguments that you're making in court are?
- Ineffective assistance of counsel.
The sole remedy for ineffective assistance
is a new trial.
Now, the second issue of the new evidence
there was no expert accident reconstruction testimony
that was presented to the jury.
Had the jury seen the newly discovered evidence
that we now can present,
the result would've been different.
- Our accident reconstruction evidence is
almost as compelling as DNA.
- Our experts will testify
the laws of physics dictate
that it's not possible that Katie's vehicle
could've been the striking vehicle.
That really is the key to the whole case.
- Now, that isn't new evidence, really.
I mean, that-- if it's physics,
the physics existed back then at the time of the trial,
so does it even qualify as newly discovered?
That's-- - The state's argument.
- Yeah. But the wording is not "new evidence."
It's newly discovered. - Right.
- In other words,
it was available at the time of trial.
- Mm-hmm.
- But it wasn't discovered by the defense
because they didn't even consider it.
- I think that these experts,
the testimony they're gonna give could be persuasive.
I still think that they have a hard issue there
to say that was newly discovered.
Same thing with the ineffectiveness of counsel.
I don't think this rises to ineffectiveness of counsel.
Because Jennifer knew
about an accident reconstruction expert.
- What? - Yeah, she had used one before.
- I had one vehicular homicide trial
prior to Katie's.
- And in that first case,
did you use an accident reconstructionist?
- I did, actually. - You did?
- I did. - Okay.
- So, right, it makes no sense.
I was aware that they exist. - Yeah.
- I'm aware of what they can do. - Yeah.
- It just didn't register in some way
that that would be useful here.
- But the fact that you knew what you needed to do
and you didn't do it, that's ineffective counsel.
- In layman's terms, yes,
but for the legal standard of ineffectiveness of counsel,
it has to be something really serious going on
like showing up to court drunk.
All she can say is she missed it.
She was trying really hard,
she was just focused on the wrong part of the case.
I don't think
this is ineffective assistance of counsel.
- Yeah.
- And this is the one shot
that Katie and her attorneys have
to secure her freedom.
- Katie has a new hearing
coming up
where the defense has to show newly discovered evidence
that's compelling enough to get her a new trial.
One thing that her attorneys told us
is they did a reconstruction of this crash.
- Okay.
- And remember that at the time of the trial,
Katie's attorney, Jennifer Streano,
didn't do this,
which really seemed like a huge gaping hole
in the defense at that time.
And I think it's really important
because when you have a hit-and-run,
and you have what's called a phantom vehicle,
meaning, you know, they don't have the car--
- Right.
- There at the scene, you do a reconstruction,
you can say, "Look, we reconstructed
"the actual circumstances,
and this is how the car should look."
Then you compare it to Katie's car.
- Mm-hmm. - And you say--
- It either fits or it doesn't fit.
- Right.
So we're actually going to go talk to the expert
that the defense is going to put on
in the hearing to present the reconstruction.
This reconstruction video that you are going to testify about
is really critical in her case.
- Yes.
The purpose of the video is to show
what damage would occur to the car
if it struck a pedestrian of Bronson Parsons' size.
There's well-established formulas to use
to get the speed of the car
based on how far the body was thrown,
so you need to know where the body was hit
and where the body landed.
He ended up 90 feet from the point of the impact,
and for that distance,
you get a range of 35 to 45 miles per hour.
- Now, tell me about the vehicle in this.
- It's the exact same model
that Katie Garding had,
and they put the same bumper on it.
- Mind if we take a look? - Yes, let's watch it.
- Oh, God.
- What?
- So violent. Look at this.
- And it does happen so quickly.
Wow.
- If I was standing next to a friend of mine,
and that happened to him,
I would say 60 miles an hour or more,
the way that that car is moving.
- Yes. How fast was it? - About 35.
- Looking at this video, it looks
exactly like what Dan Barry said he saw.
- Going onto the hood of the car,
rolling back, being carried by the car,
and then he slides off the side.
The prosecution was very adamant
that the speed was around 20 miles per hour.
- At 20 miles per hour,
the likelihood of a fatality is, like, 5%.
And at 20 miles per hour,
where did the head injury come from?
He's not gonna get those kind of injuries at that slow speed.
- But is it possible for the body to go the 90 feet
at a lower speed? - Not unless he was hanging on.
- Can you describe to us the damage of the vehicle?
- I can show it to you.
- Oh, my goodness.
- Damn.
- Brian, look at this. - Damn.
It's dented into a fold. - Yeah.
- This is all of his shoulders, just whiplashing, his head,
smashed through the glass.
After seeing the damage of this vehicle,
seeing that Katie has been put behind bars
for 40 years for this crime, she's been in eight-plus,
how did they come to this conclusion?
- In my opinion, they lost their objectivity.
They should have followed the physical evidence.
That's what you always do.
- Mm-hmm. - But they followed the witness.
That was the mistake.
- But even if they switched to the slow speed car theory
to explain the lack of damage to Katie's car,
then you have the issues with the injuries to the body.
- Right.
Their theory is, is that the head injury came
from hitting the ground.
- How does he end up hurting the back of his head
if he's falling off the car face-forward?
- Right. They have to explain how he got turned around
in the air.
When they started coming up with contradicting problems,
they never considered that maybe it wasn't her car.
- This video is very dramatic,
it looks very compelling,
but there are definitely issues that the state can attack.
They're definitely going to attack the speed
that they ran this test at.
If this is your one shot at freedom,
you want it to be rock solid.
So there's still a lot more to do on this case.
- Wasn't there glass found at the crime scene?
- Yeah, there was some glass seen there
by the trooper that night.
I need to dig back into the files
to see how much there was.
If they collected it, if they tested it at all,
that might be a really useful part
to their presentation in this evidentiary hearing.
Oh, my goodness. You've got to see this.
There's a report in here about the glass
that was looked at by the trace examiner.
- Mm-hmm.
- The victim's upper-body clothing
was riddled with glass.
It indicated that the last thing
the victim contacted was a window.
But the prosecution's saying
that the glass came from the asphalt.
- Yeah, it was already on the ground.
- Right. - Hmm.
- After the trial was over,
the forensic scientists ended up writing a letter
to the attorney general.
- Right.
- And she says, "I believe there has been
"a miscarriage of justice in this case,
and the wrong person has been convicted."
- Wow.
- This is the prosecution's expert,
who actually testified in the trial.
- Sent this to the AG? - Yeah.
You would think that would be a huge part
of Katie's case right now-- it's not.
I read the petition
that the Montana Innocence Project submitted
on Katie's behalf.
They're not talking at all about the glass.
We need to talk to our own glass expert.
And just send all this stuff to them and say,
"Okay, look, tell us what you think all of this says."
- Well, yeah, because I'm finding it hard to believe
that Bronson just fell on a pile of glass.
I'm not buying it.
- We're gonna go meet
with a forensic expert
who's been reviewing the glass reports we sent him.
- Hello. - I'm Dr. Kolowski.
- I'm Loni Coombs. - Hi. Pleasure.
- What's up, Doc? Brian Banks.
- Brian.
- After hearing about the amount of glass
found at the crime scene
and seeing this car reconstruction video,
I'm almost sure that the glass had to be from the car
that struck Bronson.
- So I was able to look through the case files,
the courtroom testimony,
a lot of the work that was done
by the state laboratory and the state expert in Montana.
- I would like to have your opinion
on the amount of glass found at the crime scene.
- There was a lot of glass shards.
So many shards that are left on the side of the road
that the officers couldn't even pick it all up.
And there was a lot of glass that analysts noted
that was embedded in the victim's jacket.
- So the prosecution dealt with that
by saying it didn't come from the hit-and-run car,
that the body fell into the roadway,
that it skidded through some glass
that was already there in the roadway.
So they believe the glass really doesn't help us identify
who the hit-and-run person was.
- Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of possibilities
that you could bring up,
but there are certain facts that we can't ignore.
The majority of the glass appeared to be plate glass,
which is this type of glass right here,
which is characteristic of windshield glass.
The expert from Montana testified
that what she saw under the microscope
was very fresh-looking glass, right?
It was sharp. Well-defined edges.
And you can really see it if we break this plate glass.
You can see right here,
you've got these nice, sharp jagged points.
The glass embedded in the victim's jacket
and the glass at the crime scene
was this type of a glass.
Now, if we take a piece of glass,
and it's on the side of the roadway for a while,
it's getting run over, it's interacting
with the asphalt and the dirt and the rocks and the elements.
- Won't be as sharp. - Exactly.
It tends to be a little bit more cloudy.
So we contacted the Montana Highway Patrol
and looked to see if there was any other accidents
on that roadway between December 1st and January 1st.
They came back and said there was no other
significant accidents on that stretch of roadway
that would've deposited that amount of glass right there.
- I want to show you a picture of Katie Garding's vehicle.
- What can you say as an expert?
- There's nothing that impacted that windshield
in any way, shape, or form
that would have shed that much glass
onto both the victim's coat and the side of the road.
- Not only was the glass
found on Bronson Parsons' body fresh glass,
our forensic scientist felt almost certain
that it was windshield glass.
I don't know if this is something
that Katie's attorneys are looking into...
But it's something that I think could be very compelling.
Hello, how are you?
So we want to share with them
what we've learned.
Well, we've found out a lot of interesting things
looking at all the different things that weren't done before.
One thing that I did not think
was addressed well at all in the trial
was the glass.
- We sent all this information
over to a forensic scientist to get his opinion
on where this glass may have come from.
- His opinion was that this appeared to be consistent
with windshield glass.
- He took it one step further
and did some research into accidents
within that same area in the last month.
There were no accidents.
- If there were no accidents previously,
how did the windshield glass get in there?
- He did say that there is further forensic testing
that can be done
on the glass,
and that is something that might be helpful
in identifying this right vehicle.
- I think it'd be more information for the judge
and potentially for the jury.
And our ability or inability
to get all that evidence of innocence
in front of the court is crucial.
'Cause this is our last, best chance of doing so.
- Thank you. Thanks for your time.
- Thank you. - Thank you.
- It's great seeing you again.
- Today's the day.
Katie has the opportunity
to go back to court.
To even be able to have a chance
to argue for a new trial is rare for any defendant,
and in Montana, you only get this chance once.
If the judge decides
that her claims don't meet the legal standard,
then she'll have to spend
the next 33 years of her life in prison.
- Morning, please be seated.
- After seven years in prison,
the judge who sentenced Katie to 40 years
has agreed to review her case.
For Katie to be in this position,
where she's able to walk into court
and bring forth evidence that may prove her innocence
is huge.
For Katie, it's a very scary moment.
- Morning, please be seated.
- After meeting with Katie's attorneys,
I feel kind of nervous for them.
They have to show newly discovered evidence
that's compelling
or give a solid case
that there was ineffectiveness of counsel
based on the legal requirements
at this stage in the game.
I think this is a close call.
- We're in the courtroom on the record.
The state is represented by Ms. Clark and Mr. Nicholson,
and Mr. Mansch, Mr. Cook, and Mr. Stephens
for Ms. Garding.
So now we'll begin with--
- So, Your Honor-- - The first witness.
- I apologize.
We ask to-- to recess this hearing
pending the filing of an amended petition.
- Very well.
The matter is recessed without date.
- Wow.
- Katie's attorneys asked for a continuance of this hearing,
a postponement,
so that they have time to add more evidence to their claim.
While this might have been very disappointing
to Katie and her family,
it's actually really good for her case,
because her case will be stronger
when it's presented to the judge.
The defense has
some compelling arguments in the case,
but I think that further investigation
and testing on the glass evidence
could be something that puts this over
into Katie's favor.
- I think Katie's innocent.
Because physical evidence does not lie.
I hope that her attorneys can present enough information,
the proper information,
because if she is innocent,
no one deserves to be behind bars
for a crime that they did not commit.
- I think she deserves a new trial.
Doesn't fairness and justice require
that a judge give this human being
another chance to have a jury hear this?