The closed case file of billionaire Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton’s DWI arrest two years ago in her home state of Texas includes letters from two doctors contending that illness and old car-accident injuries prevented her from passing the walking portion of her sobriety test.
The Parker County, Texas, prosecutor dropped charges against her Monday.
Prosecutor John Forrest explained last month that he wouldn’t pursue Walton’s driving-while-intoxicated charge because the trooper who arrested her on Oct. 7, 2011 - which was her 62nd birthday - was unavailable to testify in court. Under Texas law, prosecutors had two years to file a case, Forrest had said.
Trooper Jeffrey Davis of the Texas Highway Patrol was suspended in February pending the outcome of an internal investigation involving misconduct allegations, rendering him unavailable to help in the prosecution.
As of late Friday afternoon, Texas Department of Public safety spokesman Tom Vinger said the inquiry was still ongoing and Davis remained suspended.
Davis had pulled Walton over and jailed her overnight on a DWI count. His report said she was clocked at 71 mph in a 55 mph construction zone and that her vehicle inspection sticker had expired.
At the time, Walton - daughter of the late Wal-Mart Stores Inc. founder Sam Walton - was returning from a birthday dinner with friends at a Fort Worth restaurant and was driving to her Millsap, Texas, home. She told the officer she’d eaten steak and had two glasses of wine, but she refused to take a breath test later at the jail.
Walton also is the founder and visionary behind Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, and the arrest coincided with final preparations for the museum’s grand opening.
According to arrest records, Davis determined that Walton could not perform the “Nose TouchTest,” among others.
During the “Walk and Turn Test,” Walton showed signs of intoxication including that she could not balance, stopped while walking, and used her arms to balance, Davis wrote in the report.
“Walton stated, ‘I can’t do that at any time, I’m not balanced,’” Davis’ report continued. “I finished explaining the test to Walton, she stated, ‘I can’t do that in any situation.’
Walton agreed to attempt a “One Leg Stand” test, Davis wrote, during which she swayed, put her foot down, and used her arms to balance, he wrote, indicating intoxication.
But two physicians provided letters saying Walton cannot walk or maintain balance normally.
They cited a serious car accident in Mexico in November 1983, which led to repeated problems with her left leg, leaving it substantially shorter than her right.
Dr. Gretchen F. Toler told Walton’s attorney, Dee J. Kelly of Fort Worth, in a letter in late October 2011 that she had evaluated Walton several times in the previous decade, most recently on Nov. 19, 2010.
“She has a chronic deformity of the left lower extremity resulting from a crush injury with fractures of the tibia and fibula sustained in a motor vehicle accident over 30 years ago,” Toler, an internal medicine and diagnostic specialist, wrote. “She has a resulting leg length discrepancy and mild impairment of gait.”
In addition, Walton has a history of degenerative arthritis in the left hip and chronic neck pain related to the car accident, the internist continued. During a November 2010treadmill stress test, she experienced dizziness and impaired balance.
“The above mentioned medical problems could significantly impact Ms. Walton’s performance of gait and balance testing to determine sobriety,” Toler wrote.
The Arkansas physician who treated Walton after the 1983 car accident, Dr. Kent Westbrook, also wrote in her defense in an Oct. 31, 2011, letter.
Westbrook, a distinguished professor in the surgery department at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, said he took care of Walton initially, once she was transferred to Little Rock, and that her “initial hospitalization” lasted from Oct. 23, 1983, to Jan. 3, 1984, due to “very serious” head, spine, chest, abdomen and extremities injuries.
“Ms. Walton’s most serious injury was a massive open fracture of the left tibia and fibula,” wrote Westbrook, whose career has included general surgery, surgical oncology and nearly 15 years as director of the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, from 1984 to 1998.
“Kent Westbrook was a staff general surgeon during that time,” a UAMS spokesman, Liz Caldwell, said Friday. “He took care of trauma patients.”
Of the leg injury, Westbrook wrote that Walton lost a large amount of skin, and there was “gross infection” as the ends of bones protruded into the open wound.
“She had about 25 procedures over a 10-year period,” he wrote. “Eventually the leg healed but is grossly deformed, weak, short and unstable.” A neck fusion in 1995 “added to her neurological deficit and instability,” Westbrook said.
Kelly also provided the prosecutor letters from other attorneys regarding Walton’s past arrests.
In May 1998, a Springdale Municipal Court judge found Walton guilty of drunken driving related to a Jan. 27 accident where she crashed her 1998 Toyota 4Runner into a steel utility cage on a rural road near her Lowell home, according to newspaper archives.
In 1989, Walton struck and killed a 50-year-old woman with her vehicle after the woman stepped out into traffic on Arkansas 265 in Springdale. Police determined Walton was not at fault and issued no citations.
“There was not a hint of alcohol involvement,” one of Walton’s attorneys, John R. Elrod of Fayetteville, wrote about the 1989 case.
Elrod, who represented Walton during the 1998 case, also wrote that Walton had no other Arkansas DWI convictions.
Walton’s other attorney in the 1998 case, Woody Bassett, wrote that a 1991 DWI case against Walton was dismissed in Fayetteville Municipal Court.
Shortly after the 2011, arrest, a family spokesman told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that Walton “accepts full responsibility for” the incident that night.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 10/12/2013