A hung jury provided a legal break for a Villager who was arrested last year on a drunk driving charge.
An attorney for 55-year-old Dawn Joy Greer, of the Village of Silver Lake, took the driving under the influence case before a jury earlier this month in Sumter County Court.
After the jury went to deliberate, the jury’s foreman twice sent handwritten notes to Judge Paul Militello indicating jurors could not come to an agreement in the case.
Rather than retry the case, the prosecutor’s office offered to reduce the DUI charge to reckless driving. Greer was placed on probation for six months and ordered to perform 30 hours community service. Greer was represented by attorney J. Scott Herman, who has become well-known in The Villages after representing a line dancer who was accused of punching another woman at the square, an 85-year-old Villager who offered a woman $20 to allow him to fondle her breasts at a Publix, and a Village of Hillsborough man arrested in a seat-saving incident involving a 72-year-old woman at Spanish Springs Town Square.
Greer had been at the wheel of a silver Dodge Dart at 1:52 a.m. Oct. 15 when she was spotted traveling 52 miles per hour in a 35 mph zone on Morse Boulevard near Lake Sumter Landing, according to an arrest report from the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office. Her vehicle also began to straddle the center line before she was pulled over near Hope Lutheran Church.
She provided a driver’s license but struggled to find her insurance card. She told the deputy it was on her phone.
“I watched the defendant tap on the wrong app five times until she realized she kept trying to log into Facebook,” the deputy wrote in the arrest report. “After numerous attempts she located her proof of insurance card for another vehicle.”
The deputy walked Greer to the entrance of Hope Lutheran Church for field sobriety exercises. She was instructed to count during the one-leg stand, and told to use “Mississippi” in the count.
“During the exercise the defendant would only count to ‘Three Mississippi’ and continue to count without saying ‘Mississippi’ after every number. On the last attempt the defendant reached to the count of 13. In every attempt the defendant used her arms for balance,” the deputy wrote in the report.
Greer refused to provide a breath sample.
