Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Drunk Teacher Hit and Killed Man on Way To School: Cops

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

Jaime Caldwell, 29, is accused of driving drunk to her job as a special education teacher at an elementary school in Lexington, Kentucky and hitting and killing a man with her car. Lexington Police say a breathalyzer test showed Caldwell's results were .278, which is more than three times the legal limit for driving under the influence in Kentucky. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy looks at the case in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Cybercrime is becoming more dangerous daily. Don’t wait until it’s too late—protect your business with Apollo Networks’ top-tier cybersecurity solutions today. Get a free network health assessment and 50% off your first month! https://www.apollonetworks.com/crimefixHost:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest:  James Bogen  https://www.instagram.com/attorneybogen/Producer:Jordan ChaconCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. A teacher accused of driving drunk on the way to school and hitting and killing a man and taking off. I have the shocking case out of the bluegrass state and what Jamie Caldwell said about the fatal crash. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. And just a really quick reminder, we are now on Spotify, so you can listen to us and watch us there. So please check us out and follow us. Jamie Caldwell is facing serious charges in Kentucky. She's an elementary school teacher.

And right now she's on leave because she's accused of driving drunk and killing a man and leaving him to die. This happened back on April 16th, just before 7 a.m. in Lexington, Kentucky, on Georgetown Road near Mercer Road. Lexington police say that Jamie Caldwell hit 32-year-old Joshua Hampton, who was described as a pedestrian, and they say that she kept driving. It didn't take long for Lexington police to track down Jamie Caldwell. They used cameras from the city's real-time intelligence center. Police said they found Caldwell's car at Glendover Elementary School,

where she worked as a special education teacher. A citation said that officers noticed damage to her vehicle and Caldwell smelled of alcohol. The citation said that Caldwell failed field sobriety tests and a breathalyzer test came back showing 0.278, which is more than three times the legal limit in Kentucky. The citation said that Caldwell admitted to police that she had been drinking the night before and said she had taken medications for anxiety, depression, along with a blood pressure medication earlier in the morning.

Police say Caldwell told them that she heard a thud that morning when she was driving to school, but she didn't realize that she had hit somebody. She now faces charges, including operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol and leaving the scene of an accident, failure to render aid or assist with death, or serious physical injury. Joshua Hampton was in the hospital for two days before he passed away. A spokesperson for the school district issued a statement saying Fayette County Public Schools is aware of the situation involving Jamie Caldwell. Due to the ongoing

investigation and the confidential nature of personnel matters, we are limited in what we can share at this time. However, we can confirm that the employee has been placed on administrative leave. As always, the safety and well-being of our students and staff remains our highest priority. Our content shows just how rampant crime can be, and that's especially true with cybercrime. Cybercrime is getting more dangerous and widespread, threatening businesses like never before. Did you know that in 2024, one in five businesses fell victim to ransomware? And half of those were small businesses. Let that sink in.

But don't worry. Apollo Networks is here to protect your business and help you fight against these business-ending threats. They use the latest cybersecurity technologies to monitor your systems 24-7, stopping threats before you even know that they're there, preventing downtime and safeguarding your data. Beyond just protection, they optimize your daily operations by managing your backups, providing 24-7 tech support, and being your trusted partner for all of your needs. Their mission is simple, deliver elite-level security while helping your business run faster,

more efficiently, and with peace of mind. No business is too big or too small to be protected. From one computer to thousands, they have custom solutions to fit every industry. So right now, you can go to apollonetworks.com slash crimefix or scan the QR code on your screen to get a free network health assessment and 50% off of your first month. I want to bring in James Bogan to discuss this. He is a criminal defense attorney who practices in Cincinnati, Ohio, right across the river from Kentucky. James, this case to me, when I first saw the headline, I was kind of shocked because we have a teacher accused of driving drunk to school, not just drunk, but I mean, if she's blowing a 0.278,

that is really, really, really drunk, really, really intoxicated. And I know we can talk about how reliable those tests are or aren't. But she was hammered, according to what the police are contending. And she's driving drunk to school and then just kind of parks and then goes in, I guess, and gets to work. Yeah, that's what she did. And when the police showed up to the school, they found the car with corresponding damage. She told police she remembered hearing a thud, but didn't think she hit anybody. She took the field sobriety test and failed them and then blew 0.278. And when you're talking about a blood alcohol level that high, questions of reliability tend to go straight out the window. Those go more for cases when it's a close call. But in this case

here, 0.278, and she admits to drinking the night before. That's where those reliability questions really don't come into play here. That's very interesting because 0.08 is the legal limit in Kentucky. So you take that times three, that's 0.24. We're talking 0.278. So that raises the question, was she not only drinking the night before, but possibly drinking that morning? That's the question I have because 0.278, that's an astronomical number. I don't know if people can really wrap their head around how high that is. Yeah, that's where you got to start thinking, gee, is this kind of dangerous for a person too,

when it starts getting higher and higher? And yeah, I do wonder how recently had she been drinking before she drove? Either she drank a boatload the night before and it was taking that long for it to come out of her system, or she drank closer to when she drove. She mentioned in there, in the citation, it talks about how she had also taken, and we don't know which drugs they were, but she had taken medications for anxiety and depression along with a blood pressure medication. And I'm sure you can get an expert in a case to testify about how that changes the dynamic. But is that really going to impact a breathalyzer result?

Wouldn't that be more of like a blood test issue and how that could impact maybe your depth perception and things of that nature? You do have questions about interaction between drugs and alcohol. Obviously, an expert would need to know which drugs they were. Were these medications that you should take at night or were they ones that you should take in the morning? Because there are different anxiety and depression medications that you take are set to be taken at different times of the day, along with there are even certain blood pressure medicines that you shouldn't take during the day. Now, how is that going to play? And I don't think that's going to have as much impact here, again, because of her high blood alcohol level.

Now, when it's a lower blood alcohol level, I could see that more coming into play. But here, I think just the fact that she's 0.278, unless there's something showing that the test was really unreliable. I don't I think she's in a tough spot. Interesting. So you're her defense attorney. You like let's put you in the spot of the defense attorney and then we'll put you in the spot of the prosecutor, the Commonwealth's attorney. You're the defense attorney. You take on this case. Where do you start with this? Because on its face, this is like one bad fact after another. She's saying she hears a thud or she did hear a thud, but didn't realize she hit somebody, which is unbelievable to me. I mean, if you hear a a thud a human body hitting a vehicle no matter how

you hit it you would think yikes you you that's got to have some impact and this this gentleman died so it's not like he would have just been i don't know bumped i mean he he had to have suffered you know a grave injury so you've got that bad fact um coupled with the fact of the blood alcohol or the breathalyzer test result um and then the damage to the vehicle she's failing field sobriety tests i mean i'm assuming they're going to have you know traced her they found her so quickly because of the real-time intelligence center and they were able to track her vehicle i'm sure to the school so they're going to have video of her all over the place and video of her likely entering the school. What do you do with this? Well, the first step, obviously, I'd like to know how dark was it in the morning?

What were the weather conditions? Just real basic. You got to take a look at that no matter how it looks. And then with the field sobriety test, which she failed, I'll just be very direct. You're going to fail them even when you're sober. Those tests are stuff that you don't do on a normal everyday basis, standing on one leg, walk and turn in a tightrope fashion. Yeah. I don't know. I don't think I could do one of those. I always think about that when I see videos of people doing those, like walking in a straight line and doing this and it looks hard you don't pass those tests by not falling over that's a there's a popular perception oh i passed them because i didn't fall over no they're actually little intricate mistakes that you wouldn't think of and i'm certified in

administering these tests i have the same training as police officers. Every time I administer them on someone who's sober, they fail. I find enough mistakes to constitute probable cause to arrest. Because imagine you're nervous, you're taking a test where you're not told how it's graded and you don't get a chance to practice. What's going to happen? Now, that being said, they still come into play. And with nystagmus too, the eye twitching, which this eye test they do, there are more than 40 different causes of nystagmus. And police officers are definitely not trained to distinguish between each different cause. But you also want to look at how she look on the video. How's she walking?

How's she talking? Now, I had one client once years ago called me. It was an early morning call. From the way he was sounding, I told him, yeah, you're probably not going to do yourself any favors. It's probably not going to help if you refuse. And when I saw the video, I was like, yep, refusing definitely wouldn't have helped. But in this case here, without knowing how she looks, I mean, because you got people who can be functional even when they're drinking and look good.

But at the same time, you just want to take a look how they look, how are they walking, how are they talking. But, yeah, hearing that thud, that's definitely something that would be, how should I say, interesting to counter, especially if it caused visible damage on the car. And then for the breathalyzer itself, you're going to have to check the calibration and maintenance records on that. Things like that show that it was maintained correctly. Because sometimes, occasionally, you find police departments that did something wrong with that. things like that show that it was maintained correctly and because sometimes occasionally you find police departments that did something wrong with that and that makes the immiscibility of the breathalyzer very questionable very uh questionable but most usually police officers do a good job but then there some years back he had the the Intoxilyzer 5000 or something, some new machine come out where there was a whole lot of hoopla about its reliability.

And a lot of police departments actually switched back to the older ones because of all the questions that were being raised. So you look at all that. And if there was a blood test or not, obviously, I don't know if there was a blood test, if they did a follow-up blood test or not because of medication she talked about. I actually go to the coroner's lab and inspect the samples visually. And one time when I did that, I actually found mistakes that are made by the officer who took the sample. And that actually made a difference in the case. case. So those are the things you look at. And as on the other side of it too, other side of the coin, you always got to look at mitigation, possible mitigation issues when you're the defense attorney. When even when you're discussing

possible defenses, you got to have your foot on the other side of the fence, take a look at, obviously she has mental health issues. if she's taking anxiety and depression medications and you got to see how that's all that factors in and if there's a substance abuse issue while it's not an ex none of that is an excuse you want to try to get the client in this getting things things back on track with treating that stuff properly, because that stuff does make a difference for mitigation purposes. Now, put on your prosecutor hat. I know you're a defense attorney, but come at this now from the Commonwealth attorney's point of view. You're going to want to throw the book at this woman, even if she is a first-time

offender. She's driving, you know, if you're looking at it from the prosecutor's point of view, more than three times the legal limit. And you're a school teacher. You didn't call in sick to work that day. You got in your car and you got behind the wheel. If you're the prosecutor, you're looking at it from that perspective. And then you drove to school and you pulled into car and you got behind the wheel. If you're the prosecutor, you're looking at it from that perspective. And then you drove to school and you pulled into school and you went to work to go teach little kids. You're a special ed teacher and you went to school hammered to go teach little kids. There's a real issue there. Yeah, that's absolutely frightening when you look at that. Somebody basically being very intoxicated, showing up to work to go every which way she could. And then you just have the fact that, you know, she was just on the road like that when she's that hammered and doesn't

even notice that she hit somebody. And when somebody, even when they don't have a prior record, when they have something like that, you're not going to walk out of that without prison unless prosecutors really made, and the police really made a lot of mistakes, typically mistakes by the police. Do you see this case, it will now go to the grand jury, do you see them maybe increasing the charges in this case? Because right now she's facing a couple of different charges, but we know how that goes. A lot of times a person will be charged initially and then further investigation happens. And I feel like in Kentucky, depending on which state you're in, the grand jury process can take a little longer, depending where you where you are. You know, there can be more time that elapses between the arrest and the preliminary hearing and then the grand jury.

What do you see happening? Is there a possibility that enhanced charges or more charges are filed or the grand jury returns an indictment with increased charges. I absolutely see additional charges because you did not have a vehicular homicide charge initially here, even though the guy died right away. So it wasn't waiting for him to die or anything like that. And right now she's just charged with leaving the scene of an accident where there is a serious bodily injury and failure to render aid when there's a serious bodily injury. Those each carry up to five years in prison, but the vehicular homicide, which she would definitely be charged with, that carries 10 to 20 years in prison. So she's looking at a maximum of 30 years in prison. Now, if she is she going to get that long, if she if the evidence pans out and she does a plea deal, I don't think so. But she's definitely going to be looking at prison time here unless it turns out the police really screwed up.

So, James, knowing what you know right now, do you see this case possibly not going to trial? Right now, if it turns out the police did not make significant mistakes with the field sobriety tests and with the breath test, if the breathalyzer was properly maintained and calibrated and so on, and there are no issues with any other tests, suppose there's a blood test and there's no issues with that, then I would be very hard pressed to see this case go into trial. But if the police made any mistakes, say the breathalyzer was not properly calibrated or properly maintained on schedule, or if there was not substantial compliance with the NHTSA standards national highway transportation safety administration standards for administering the field sobriety test then their admissibility would come into play too and if it if she looks good on the video walking good talking good and then yeah, hypothetically, those could be good trial

issues. And suppose there's a blood test and they screwed that up too, that got screwed up some way too. Because I've had cases where on the surface, it looks like a slam dunk, but then you'll see significant mistakes being made with either the field sobriety tests or procedures or stuff about how the blood test was handled. And that ends up playing in the defense's favor. But unless you have that kind of stuff coming into play, I don't see this case going to trial. I can't get over the mugshot, James, the mugshot with the smirk.

And maybe that's just a byproduct of being highly intoxicated. It could be, it could be a product of being nervous too. You don't know unless you know the, what's going on inside that person's head. Yeah, most certainly. Well, James Bogan, thank you so much for joining us and offering your expertise and your time. I appreciate it as always. Thank you. Always. Thanks for having me, Anjanette.

Always a pleasure. Always a privilege. And just to recap, Lexington police say that Jamie Caldwell hit a man who was walking on foot. He was 32-year-old Joshua Hampton. This happened back on April 16th in Lexington, Kentucky. They say that Caldwell kept driving. Lexington police tracked Caldwell down very quickly using cameras from the city's real-time intelligence center. Police said they found Caldwell's car parked at Glendover Elementary School, where she worked as

a special education teacher. Officers wrote in a citation that her vehicle had noticeable damage and Caldwell had alcohol on her breath. The citation said that Caldwell failed field sobriety tests, and when they administered a breathalyzer, that test came back at 0.278, which is more than three times the legal limit for driving under the influence in Kentucky. The citation said Caldwell admitted she had been drinking the night before and had taken medication for anxiety and depression, and that she had also taken a blood pressure medication that morning. Police say Caldwell told them that she heard a thud that morning when she was driving,

but she didn't realize that she had hit someone. So where does Jamie Caldwell's case stand right now? Well, she was in court last week. She has pleaded not guilty. She remains free on a $25,000 bond, but she is on house arrest. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thank you so much for being with me.

I'll see you back here next time.