A jury found a 29-year-old Oak Harbor man guilty of vehicular homicide following an emotional three-day trial in Island County Superior Court this week.

After deliberating for about five hours, the jury returned a verdict of guilty against Raymond Prokop, an Oak Harbor High School graduate and owner of a local computer store, at around noon Thursday.

Prokop will be sentenced Jan. 8. He faces between 21 and 27 months in prison.

The case stems from a one-car accident on Reservation Road Feb. 24 that killed 29-year-old Molly Rice, who had moved to the island with her husband about a month prior.

Prokop was speeding in a 2005 Nissan 350Z and lost control at a curve in the road. The car struck a power pole and Rice, who wasn’t wearing a seat belt, was thrown from the car. She died at the scene.

“I think that the most frightening thing about this case is that (Prokop) doesn’t get it,” Deputy Prosecutor Ann Lundwall said in her closing arguments. “It’s the car’s fault. It’s Molly’s fault for the way she was sitting, but he doesn’t think it was his fault.”

Prokop was the star witness for both the prosecution and defense. He testified as the only defense witness while the prosecution played a tape of his interview with a detective on the day of the accident.

Prokop appeared extremely upset and wept loudly both in court and on the recording.

Prokop described an ordinary scene between friends that suddenly turned tragic. In order to cheer up Rice, Prokop said he took her for a drive in his new sports car. After driving on Reservation Road, he turned around to re-experience the roller-coaster effect of speed on a hill.

“There was a speed wobble,” he said, “and when I tried to correct, it’s just like I lost control. I lost control. … It all happened so fast.”

The trial hinged on the issue of reckless driving. In order to find him guilty of vehicular homicide, the jury needed to decide whether Prokop was driving recklessly, or under the legal definition, driving “in a rash and heedless manner, indifferent to the consequences.”

Lundwall argued that Prokop was driving recklessly because he was speeding. She presented an abundance of evidence that Prokop was driving at least 80 miles per hour on a county road with a 50 mph limit. She characterized Prokop as an arrogant and reckless young man who didn’t think speed limits apply to him.

Prokop’s attorney, Charles Hamilton of Seattle, presented a three-fold defense.

First, he argued that it’s simply not reckless to drive over the speed limit in a sports car because they are built specifically to go fast. He suggested that it’s generally accepted in our culture that people with sports cars will speed.

“He bought a car that was not designed to go the speed limit,” he said. “I don’t know anyone who buys a sports car for the privilege of going the speed limit.”

Second, Hamilton said a mechanical problem with the car, something called a “speed wobble,” was an intervening cause of the accident. Prokop testified that he had complained about the problem to the dealership several times. He said a severe speed wobble during the accident prevented him from slowing down in time for the curve, causing him to lose control.

Third, Hamilton emphasized the fact that Rice was not wearing a seat belt, even after Prokop asked her to buckle up.

Judge Alan Hancock, however, would not allow Hamilton to argue that Prokop was not culpable for Rice’s death because she was not wearing a seat belt. Nevertheless, Hamilton made sure the jury knew she chose not to wear a seat belt and was sitting “Indian style.”

Lundwall tore apart the defense’s case.

“(The defense) would seem to suggest that since he’s driving a high-performance car, he doesn’t have to obey the speed limit,” she said. “Ladies and gentleman, I would submit to you that that is actually insane.”

In regard to the speed wobble, a prosecution expert testified that there was nothing wrong with the car. David Temple, an investigator with the Department of Transportation assigned to the State Patrol, examined the car to determine if any mechanical defects were present.

“I found nothing present that would cause the high-speed wobble,” he said.

In her closing, Lundwall asserted that Prokop had “no business” driving fast if he knew there was a speed wobble problem.

Lundwall also criticized Prokop for changing his story.

One resident, a paramedic and three law enforcement officers who were at the scene of the accident testified that Prokop told them he was driving 80 to 85 miles an hour at the time of the collision. In the taped statement, Prokop told the detective that he assumed his speed would be about 80 miles per hour.

Detective Scott Whitman with the State Patrol analyzed the scene of the accident and estimated the speed at between 79 to 84 miles per hour.

But in court, Prokop lowered his estimate of his speed to 70 to 75 mph.

In her closing arguments, Lundwall lambasted Prokop for this discrepancy. “Now he’s changing his mind and thinks he was going a different speed,” she said.

While there were no witnesses to the accident, the prosecutor called a number of people who were at the scene soon after to testify in court.

John and Rita Cline were at his mother’s home on Reservation Road. John was outside and heard it. He ran inside and told his wife to call 911, then ran to the accident scene. Rita followed soon after.

She saw that Rice had been thrown from the wreckage of the car.

“She was laying on her left side, curled up in a fetal position on top of telephone lines,” she said.

John was the first person to speak to Prokop after the accident. Prokop was still sitting in the driver’s seat of the wrecked car and seemed dazed. Cline twice asked the young man if he was OK and Prokop twice responded with a telephone number.

“I then touched him and asked if he was OK and he said yeah,” Cline said.

John Cline described Reservation Road as a dangerous place to speed.

“There’s a lot of deep gullies, a lot of blind driveways,” he said. “You have pedestrians. You have people riding horseback. … There are too many things you cannot see on that road.”

In the taped interview, Prokop admitted that he had driven much faster at that curve in the road many times in the past, but without any problem.

“One time I blew by a sheriff at about 140, but he just turned his lights on and off again. I slowed down,” he said with a laugh.

The trial began with testimony from Molly’s husband, Terence Rice. He is a first class petty officer in the Navy and was training in Jacksonville, Fla., last February. He testified that the last time he spoke to his wife she seemed upbeat.

“The next phone call I received was from the Navy, informing me that she had died in a motor vehicle accident,” he said.