Goodman witness cites Bentley flaws

When automotive expert Luka Serdar first learned John Goodman's Bentley had been sold at auction, he was pleased.

"Great, there will be no law enforcement to prevent me from doing full diagnostic testing," the MIT-trained former NASA rocket scientist told jurors Friday in Goodman's DUI manslaughter retrial.

In what could be the last full day of defense testimony before Goodman's retrial ends Monday, Serdar recapped all the tests he performed - plus some he couldn't - to support the former Houston billionaire's claim that a failure in his Bentley's sophisticated computer system caused the February 2010 crash that killed 23-year-old Scott Wilson.

Parts were missing

Though he told jurors he still believed some computer error codes show Goodman's Bentley malfunctioned before the crash, Serdar ultimately couldn't say they caused the wreck.

As an attorney from Bentley looked on from his seat in the courtroom, Serdar said his hopes for a full inspection of the Bentley after Goodman's 2012 conviction was thrown out fell flat when he arrived at the garage of the Bentley's new owner in Sugar Land in December and found critical parts were missing.

The missing parts played a big role in Goodman's failed attempt to get his case thrown out before the trial because prosecutors released his Bentley to his insurance company without telling his defense team or the court.

Aside from the missing parts, Serdar told defense attorney Scott Richardson, another critical Bentley part was broken when he examined the $250,000 car. He said the part wasn't damaged when he tested the 2007 Bentley GTC convertible at the sheriff's office impound lot in January 2011 - about a year after the crash.

He said something, possibly a screwdriver, was used to break the throttle box cover. But under questioning from prosecutor Alan Johnson, who confronted him with his own photos from 2011, Serdar conceded that the defect to the engine part appeared even then.

Testing the vehicle in the sheriff's impound lot in January 2011, he said he got a series of "trouble codes" that indicated something was amiss. Using a model of the Bentley's throttle system, Serdar demonstrated for jurors how a valve on one of the throttles didn't open properly, explaining that the valve controls how much air is sent into the engine.

Didn't affect brakes

Serdar later agreed with Johnson that the throttle issue would not have affected Goodman's brakes, and said he didn't consider in his evaluation of Goodman's own testimony earlier this week that he tried to pump the brakes.

Though Serdar said one of the computers registered zero mileage on the car at the time of the crash, which also strongly suggests a computer failure, he couldn't provide specifics to Johnson when the prosecutor wanted concrete answers on if and how the various malfunctions happened.

"I can't tell you what the system was doing," Serdar told Johnson.