A Mobile County jury convicted a Theodore man of manslaughter following a crash that killed a retired schoolteacher outside a Mobile fast-food restaurant.
Jurors deliberated for about 90 minutes before finding Maurice White, 60, guilty in connection with the January 2014 crash that killed 66-year-old Martha Wingo Hinton. Prosecutors said White was driving under the influence of alcohol and a prescription painkiller when his pickup truck left Schillinger Road and struck a vehicle parked outside a restaurant on Airport Boulevard. Hinton, who was inside the parked vehicle, died at the scene.
Hinton, a Robertsdale native, spent years teaching at Loxley Elementary School before retiring. Prosecutors told jurors a portable breath test administered shortly after the crash showed White’s blood-alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit. White’s defense attorney argued his client had suffered a medical emergency that caused him to lose control of the truck, but jurors rejected that account.
Mobile police initially arrested White on a manslaughter charge, and a grand jury later indicted him on a charge of reckless murder as well. Manslaughter carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison under Alabama law. Following his conviction, White was booked into Mobile County Metro Jail and released after about 90 minutes on a $15,000 bond, with a judge ordering him to submit to daily alcohol monitoring while the case proceeds. Court records show White had no prior arrests in Mobile County before the crash.
A hearing to review a pre-sentencing investigation report was expected later in the month, ahead of formal sentencing. The case drew attention in the Theodore and west Mobile community, where Hinton was remembered by former students and colleagues for her decades spent teaching in Baldwin County classrooms.
Circuit Court Judge Robert Smith presided over the trial, which drew a small gallery of family members from both sides. Prosecutors said the case served as a reminder of the dangers of impaired driving on Mobile County’s busier commercial corridors, where parking lots and drive-through lanes sit close to heavily traveled roads. Sentencing was expected to follow within weeks of the pre-sentencing report’s completion.