Kruse DUI Trial On Hold As It Heads To Manatee Appeals Court: Records

MANATEE COUNTY, FL — The jury trial in the driving under the influence case of Manatee County Commissioner George Kruse, which was scheduled to begin Monday morning, is on hold as an appeals court considers evidence suppression in the case, court records show.

The commissioner was charged with a DUI after an April 2022 incident in which he crashed his truck into a tree in the Greyhawk Landing community, where he lives.

Deputies with the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office didn't arrest the Kruse or file charges against him the day of the single-vehicle crash. Instead, they let his wife drive him to their nearby home. She later came back to the scene to collect his traffic citation and have the truck towed, bodycam footage from Lieutenant Nicholas Pruitt, who responded to the scene, shows.

Following the crash, the sheriff's office submitted evidence to State Attorney Ed Brodsky’s office for consideration. A new traffic citation charging him with driving under the influence was issued about two months after incident in June.

The trial’s postponement comes after Brodsky’s office filed a motion appealing Judge Erika Nikla Quartermaine’s Feb. 1 decision to toss statements made by Kruse that were recorded by Pruitt’s body-worn camera, court records show. (Watch a portion of Pruitt’s bodycam footage below.)

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• Commissioner Asks To Toss Bodycam Footage In DUI Case: Manatee Court

In November, the commissioner’s legal team motioned to suppress both the bodycam audio and video footage as admissible evidence during the trial because the lieutenant didn’t read him his Miranda rights.

His lawyers argued that under Florida Statutes’ “accident report privilege,” any statement made to a law enforcement officer during a crash investigation can’t be used as evidence in a civil or criminal trial.

While Quartermaine agreed that audio from the footage can’t be heard as evidence during the trial, the video and other non-testimonial evidence can be used in court.

State prosecutors argued that both should be permissible in court and that the “accident report privilege” doesn’t apply to those who make “untruthful statements,” the judge summarized in her order.

In their argument, state attorneys pointed to comments made to Kruse’s insurance agency immediately following the crash, she wrote. The commissioner told the agent that an animal ran in front of his vehicle, causing him to swerve.

Meanwhile, bodycam footage shows him telling Pruitt that “someone swerved in front of me, so I swerved out and hit something,” according to her order.

“The state argues and the court agrees that both version cannot be simultaneously true,” Quartermain wrote. “The state contends that neither of the versions are true and that the real reason he hit the tree was because he was driving impaired.”

The judge agreed that the state attorney’s office can introduce evidence regarding Kruse’s “physical appearance, general demeanor, slurred speech or breath scent.”

Bodycam footage from Pruitt, the first to respond to the scene after other drivers alerted him to the crash, showed Kruse in the back of his wife's SUV by the time the officer arrived.

Jessica Kruse, who was driving behind her husband in a separate vehicle, told the deputy her husband swerved, hitting the tree and setting off the airbag, the video shows.

"Now, he's kind of a little out of it," she is heard saying.

George Kruse said, "I was coming through the gate, and somebody cut me off and blew right past me. And I tried to, like, hit my brakes and curve around them and just cut a curb."

A MCSO investigator, Benjamin Main, later found the commissioner told a different version of this story to his Progressive insurance claim agent. George Kruse told the agent he swerved to miss a small animal in the road, which caused him to hit the tree, according to the MCSO investigative report.

Reviewing the bodycam footage from deputies that responded to the crash, Main noted, "George (Kruse) appears to have glassy eyes, slurred speech, clammy wet skin and droopy eyelids."

In his bodycam footage, Pruitt told dispatchers, "The driver is impaired (on) something; however, he was not in the vehicle when I got on scene. He was in his wife's vehicle."

The lieutenant later told Jessica Kruse that her husband was "obviously impaired" and "you need to just talk to him about that."

Because George Kruse wasn't in his truck and no witnesses stayed to give deputies a statement, Pruitt is also heard in the video telling the commissioner's wife that she could take her husband home.

In his bodycam footage, the lieutenant is never seen giving George Kruse a Breathalyzer test or conducting a field sobriety test.

In a comment provided to Main during his investigation, Pruitt wrote, "A field sobriety test nor a breath test was administered as there was no independent witness to the crash on scene that could place Mr. Kruse in the vehicle under active physical control of the vehicle. It was not learned until a few days later of the entire 911 call that clearly places Mr. Kruse inside the vehicle and the sole occupant."

A capias arrest request was submitted to the state attorney's office "with this new evidence in mind," he added.

When speaking with her minutes after the crash, Pruitt also told Jessica Kruse, according to bodycam footage, "I know who your husband is, and this could have turned out very badly and he just needs to be more cognizant of that."

The lieutenant added, "The benefit here is that nobody of the seven people that stopped and told me about this (accident) stayed to say he was in that car. Had that been the case, my traffic units would have been here working the crash, working the DUI, and he would have gone to jail."

Watch a portion of Pruitt's bodycam footage from Kruse's April 2022 single-vehicle crash: