Mississippi Court to Hear Appeal in Triple Fatal Impaired Driving Case

The attorney for a woman convicted of causing a car crash that killed three Mississippi College students will argue before the state appeals court that she was not impaired while she was driving, but instead took drugs after the crash to calm her nerves.

The appeal of Krystal Marie Teston was supposed to be heard during the May-June term of the Mississippi Court of Appeals. However, water damage caused by a faulty sprinkler in the Supreme Court building, where oral arguments are heard, forced dozens of cases to be rescheduled. Arguments in the case were set for July 23.

Prosecutors said Teston, formerly of Slidell, La., was intoxicated on Lorcet, or hydrocodone, when she caused the Sept. 10, 2004 accident on Interstate 10 in Biloxi, Miss. Teston was convicted of four counts of felony driving under the influence in 2007 in Harrison County and was sentenced to a total of 60 years in prison with 30 years suspended.

Gulfport attorney Tim Holleman said June 26 he would argue, as the defense did in her trial, that Teston wasn’t impaired until after the crash.

“It was clear from the evidence that when the police officer first met her he testified there was no impairment whatsoever. An hour later, he said she was obviously slurring her speech. She told him that she had taken her medicine after the accident,” Holleman said.

Killed were Lindsay Miller; her boyfriend Maksim Sisoev, a foreign exchange student from Uzbekistan; and Elizabeth Finch, a Clinton native. Two others in the car were injured in the accident and recovered.

According to the court record, Teston’s attorneys contended she took the drug while a Biloxi DUI investigator left her unobserved.