TAMPA Florida

Prosecutors dropped 65 of former sheriff's Deputy Daniel Brock's DUI arrests between October 2005 and October 2006. One was the case of William G. Lapanne.

Brock arrested Lapanne after a two-car crash on June 24, 2006, and then, a prosecutor said, forced him to give a blood sample without having a legal reason to do so.

The Hillsborough Sheriff's Office fired Brock on May 24 after an internal review found that he arrested 58 people with blood-alcohol content below the legal threshold, often without evidence of suspicious driving behavior, positive urine samples or video to back his claims.

Results from Lapanne's blood test indicated that he had used a prescription drug and marijuana but didn't show how recently, according to the State Attorney's Office. A Florida Department of Law Enforcement report said his blood-alcohol content was 0.03, below the 0.08 limit at which state law presumes a driver is impaired.

But Assistant State Attorney Kim Seace said they couldn't use the results in court.

The reason she gave: When a defendant refuses a breath test, as Lapanne did, a forced blood draw is allowed only if authorities have evidence that someone sustained "serious bodily injury" in the crash.

Serious injury or not?

In his report, Brock said a charge nurse at Brandon Hospital told him that one of the car crash victims "was being treated as a trauma alert." He did not name the nurse. Based on that information, he conducted the forced blood draw, his report states.

However, the victim told prosecutors that neither she nor her husband had been seriously injured, Seace said. Medical records from the hospital backed that claim, Seace added.

Hillsborough County Fire Rescue records indicate that emergency workers responded to a "minor two-vehicle accident, " said spokesman Ray Yeakley. He said a victim with injuries that weren't life-threatening was taken to the hospital.

Serious bodily injury, by state law, "creates a substantial risk of death, serious personal disfigurement, or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ."

Seace said she provided the medical records to the Sheriff's Office with the understanding that investigators would interview the charge nurse to discuss Brock's claims.

On Wednesday, she did not know if that occurred and could not say for certain what Brock had been told about the victim's condition.

But prosecutors were convinced that blood test results would be thrown out by a judge before trial. They dropped the case on Oct. 24 without ever formally filing charges against Lapanne, Seace said.

Then, based on a request by the Sheriff's Office, Seace said, prosecutors turned their attention to whether Brock committed a crime in his handling of the case. Specifically, they considered whether he might have made an incorrect official statement.

It was this review, Hillsborough State Attorney Mark Ober said Wednesday, that generated a letter from Chief Assistant State Attorney Karen Stanley on Nov. 6. Her letter said the "facts in this case meet the element of a crime" but would be best handled administratively by the Sheriff's Office.

But in Brock's internal affairs report, quoted widely by media outlets in recent days, Detective Bruce Crumpler stated that Stanley's letter referred to a different driving under the influence case involving the deputy.

Crumpler, who conducted the internal affairs investigation, wrote that Stanley sent the memo after reviewing the July 17, 2006, DUI arrest of Kristopher Amos. The internal investigation found that Brock submitted a second arrest report on Amos weeks after his arrest that contained revised field sobriety test results.

The subject line of Stanley's Nov. 6 letter includes the case number of the internal affairs probe into Brock released last week. But the letter does not specify a particular DUI case.

Investigator Crumpler and prosecutor Stanley spoke Wednesday about the genesis of her letter. Afterward, representatives from their offices still couldn't agree on whether it was about Amos or Lapanne.

A case of confusion

Sheriff's spokesman J.D. Callaway said Crumpler still contended the letter was about the Amos case.

Based on the Sheriff's Office internal audit, the State Attorney's Office is conducting a review of Brock's conduct to decide if criminal charges are warranted.

Brock and his attorney were unavailable Wednesday for comment.

Lapanne's attorney, Jeff Paulk, said his client may have a civil damages claim, too. The arrest required Lapanne, 49, who works in home restoration in St. Petersburg, to post bond, pay a lawyer and fight with his insurance company for money to repair his damaged truck.

Having blood drawn against his will was the most serious price Lapanne paid.