Motorcycle expert trumps testimony of Pasco County deputies in DUI case

TRINITY — Pasco deputies showed up at the storage center on March 30 to diffuse a fight between Robert Corbin and his girlfriend.

Corbin, now 55, had downed a few beers. Deputies saw his black 2006 Harley-Davidson motorcycle lying on the ground nearby. A deputy wrote in his report that Corbin fell off his bike, then ran toward the stairs of the building, "leaving the motorcycle on its side still running and the key in the ignition."

They put him in handcuffs and charged him with DUI.

Three deputies came to court this week to testify to that scene under oath: Corbin fleeing, motorcycle engine running. Only problem: A motorcycle expert says it couldn't have happened.

"If the bike leans over for more than 45 degrees for one second," Ken Wood, a Harley-Davidson salesman, told the Times on Friday, "it shuts off."

That safety feature was built into all Harleys made after 2003, Wood told jurors earlier this week. There's no way the bike could remain running on the ground, he said.

After a just a few minutes of deliberations Monday afternoon, the jury acquitted Corbin.

"I was totally innocent," Corbin said Friday, "and they were just trying to railroad me."

• • •

A DUI charge doesn't require a running motor, said J. Larry Hart, a former state and federal prosecutor who works criminal defense cases. It simply requires an impaired person in some kind of control of a vehicle.

"The question is always one of either operating, or being in actual physical control, of the vehicle," Hart said Friday. "There is no requirement that it's running. Just that you have the ready ability to operate it."

But Corbin says he wasn't operating the bike at all in the early morning of March 30. He said the bike was damaged and had been in a storage unit for a couple of months, and he took it out the previous day to wash it.

It was simply standing there when it got knocked over during the argument with his girlfriend, Corbin said.

Deputies responded to the fight about 5:14 a.m., said their report. Corbin's girlfriend was a manager at the mini-storage center and lived in an apartment upstairs.

Corbin had glassy eyes, slurred speech and reeked of alcohol, the report said. He admitted to drinking beers, and said he did not have a license because it was suspended during a prior DUI.

Corbin's license had been revoked in January for having four or more DUIs, the deputy wrote.

Corbin was arrested on charges of DUI, driving with a revoked license and refusing to take a breath test. He was taken to the Land O'Lakes jail.

Corbin's previous arrests include DUI charges in 2003 and 2008, and he pleaded guilty to a 2007 charge of domestic battery by strangulation.

• • •

Corbin said the deputies built the latest DUI case on the claim the motorcycle engine was running. But his girlfriend testified he hadn't used the motorcycle in the hours leading up to their argument, and the motorcycle salesman said it would be impossible for the engine to remain running on the ground.

But sheriff's spokesman Kevin Doll defended the testimony of the deputies. He said the agency's motorcycle unit has bikes similar to Corbin's, and that the motor "sometimes" remains on while the bike is on the ground.

"To believe that technology is infallible at the expense of the sworn oath of our deputies would be unfair to our deputies," he said. "Things happen, like space shuttles that fall out of the sky and explode."

Even so, Corbin, an avid motorcycle rider, said he knew he was innocent.

"You've got to go through the whole judicial system, and that can be a crapshoot," he said. "You never know which way it's going to go."

Camille C. Spencer can be reached at cspencer@sptimes.com or (813) 909-4609.