WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — John Goodman, the Florida tycoon who infamously adopted his 42-year-old girlfriend, was found guilty Friday of DUI manslaughter, vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of his 2010 traffic accident in which a 23-year-old was killed.
Goodman, 48, the founder of the International Polo Club Palm Beach, faces up to 30 years in prison. A sentencing hearing is scheduled on April 30.
Circuit Judge Jeffrey Colbath remanded a stone-faced Goodman into custody soon after the verdict was read.
Prosecutors claimed Goodman had over a dozen drinks before his Bentley crashed into 23-year-old Scott Wilson’s Hyundai, slamming Wilson’s car into a canal where he drowned in February 2010 in Wellington, Fla.
Palm Beach County Medical Examiner Michael Bell testified that Wilson would have survived the crash had he not drowned.
Goodman took the stand Wednesday and testified that he had had only four drinks over the course of the night of the accident, but said he was “absolutely not” drunk.
The millionaire said the cause of the crash was a malfunction in his Bentley’s brakes, and said he walked away from the accident to get help for him and for Wilson because his cell phone was out of battery power.
Goodman said he was so out of it after the accident that he had no idea that Wilson’s car had ended up in the water.
“What, did it just disappear?” prosecutor Ellen Roberts said in response to Goodman’s claim.
Bewildered due to a concussion, broken wrist, fractured sternum and the aggravation of a previous back injury, Goodman said he ended up stumbling into the residence of an acquaintance. Once there, he began drinking liquor to reduce his pain.
He explained his .177 blood alcohol content level three hours after the accident on the post-crash drinking binge.
But the five man, one woman jury was not persuaded and found Goodman guilty after five-and-a-half hours of deliberations.
“I think justice was served,” prosecutor Ellen Roberts said after the verdict was reached, adding that some of the defense’s theories were “pretty bizarre.”
“I think [the jury] probably returned the only verdict that they could,” she added.
Goodman garnered headlines earlier this year when court documents in a civil lawsuit stemming from the same accident revealed he had adopted his 42-year-old girlfriend as his daughter.
Goodman, the heir to an air conditioning fortune, has said through his attorneys that he adopted Heather Colby Hutchins to better manage a trust fund for his two biological children.
Attorneys for Wilson’s parents allege the adoption is simply an attempt to shield assets.