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Editor’s note: This article has been updated.
Indiana state Rep. Jim Lucas, R-Seymour, has entered into a plea agreement for Class C operating a vehicle while intoxicated and Class B leaving the scene of an accident charges following his early-morning crash and arrest in Jackson County in May.
According to the plea agreement, Lucas will serve a suspended sentence — 60 days for the OWI and 180 days for leaving the scene of an accident — and be placed on probation for a year.
Probation may be terminated after 180 days if Lucas completes the special terms and conditions of probation, which include paying $4,000 to the Indiana Department of Transportation, being tested for controlled substances, drugs and alcohol, and submitting to an alcohol and drug abuse program.
Lucas’ license to operate a vehicle will also be suspended for 60 days.
According to The Associated Press, police were called early in the morning May 31 about a vehicle running into a guardrail at the interchange of Interstate 65 and Indiana 11, a few miles north of Seymour, the state police crash report said.
Seymour police found the badly damaged pickup truck with Lucas’ state legislator license plate nearly 3 miles away, parked behind a business, AP reported.
Lucas, whom police stopped as he was walking nearby, told the trooper he lost control of his truck while swerving to miss a deer, AP reported.
The Indiana Lawyer has reached out to a spokesperson for Lucas for comment.
‘I thought I see a deer, how’s that?’
According to a probable cause affidavit, Lucas had a blood alcohol content of .097.
The car had “major” damage to the front and “blown/missing” tires, the affidavit says. An officer told Lucas he could smell alcohol coming from his breath and asked Lucas if he would be willing to perform tests to determine if he was impaired.
Lucas said he would, and the officer administered three tests.
During a test where he was supposed to follow a pen with his eyes, the affidavit says Lucas showed four clues that resulted in a failed test. When he tried standing on one leg, the officer saw Lucas “sway, use his arms to balance, and put his foot down.”
The officer arrested Lucas and notified his chain of command that he was taking a state representative to jail for an OWI.
While at a hospital for a blood draw, the affidavit says Lucas made a statement about being “out celebrating with his wife, and then life threw him a curveball.”
“Mr. Lucas did not elaborate or go into any further detail,” the affidavit says.
Lucas asked why he was being charged with leaving the scene of a crash, according to the affidavit, and said that he wasn’t leaving when he walked away after parking the car, but that he was going to get help.
The officer asked Lucas if he would be willing to give a statement for the crash report.
“I thought I saw a deer, how’s that?” Lucas said, according to the affidavit.
Asked why he parked the car behind a business instead of out front in the parking lot, Lucas “had a long silence,” the affidavit says, before saying he didn’t want to leak engine oil onto the parking lot and cause the business to lose customers.
‘I screwed up’
In an interview Monday with WIBC, Lucas said he doesn’t have plans to resign from the Indiana Legislature.
“I screwed up,” he said. “I’m human. I made a mistake and then compounded it with some bad decision making.”
Asked how much he had to drink that night, Lucas said “not that much.”
“Had some things pop up in the evening,” he said. “It was just challenges, you know, the stressors that other people go through about their daily lives, and I obviously handled it poorly and tried driving home. Thought I could, couldn’t. And everybody knows the rest after that.”
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