WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A former Wellington polo mogul twice convicted in a 2010 crash that killed a recent college graduate won't be getting a new trial.
Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Gillen on Thursday denied a request for postconviction relief.
Goodman was first convicted of DUI manslaughter in the February 2010 death of Scott Wilson in 2012, but juror misconduct led to a retrial and a second guilty verdict in 2014.
The founder of the International Polo Club Palm Beach (now known as the National Polo Center) is currently serving a 16-year prison sentence.
Defense attorney Michael Ufferman argued that Goodman's previous defense team was ineffective for failing to call a toxicologist to rebut the opinion of the state's toxicologist during the retrial.
Evidence during the trial showed that Goodman racked up a bar tab of $272 in the hours before the Feb. 12, 2010, crash that killed the 23-year-old University of Central Florida graduate.
Goodman's Bentley slammed into Wilson's car at the corner of 120th Avenue South and Lake Worth Road, sending it into a canal, where Wilson drowned.
Goodman admitted to taking two tequila shots and having a vodka drink, but he denied being intoxicated, even though his blood-alcohol level was twice the legal limit.
Instead, defense attorneys claimed a disoriented Goodman fled the scene to find help and stumbled upon a polo player's shed, where he drank a bottle of liquor to calm his nerves.
In his written argument, Ufferman contended that a toxicologist would have substantiated Goodman's claims that the alcohol he consumed would have been fully absorbed by the time of the crash and that a retrograde extrapolation analysis would have shown the blood-alcohol level of 0.177 at the time of the blood draw was consistent with Goodman's testimony that he consumed alcohol after the crash.
Assistant State Attorney Leigh Miller countered in her written argument that Goodman didn't lose his trial because of deficient attorneys. Rather, she said, "no one believed his unsupported story about drinking in the man-cave."
Gillen agreed, saying Goodman's attorney "has not shown prejudice such that the outcome of the trial would have been different."
Goodman is serving his sentence at the Everglades Correctional Institution in Miami-Dade County. He's scheduled to be released on Jan. 22, 2028.
