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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowAfter regaining her freedom in April 2025, Kara Beaty is suing St. Joseph County, the City of Mishawaka and others over a prison sentence tied to a 2020 crash that seriously injured motorcyclist Erin Smith.
Beaty is seeking damages for intentional inflection of emotional distress, conspiracy to deprive constitutional rights and deprivation of liberty without probably cause among other counts in a lawsuit filed Thursday in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, South Bend Division.
Beaty was convicted in 2023 of causing serious bodily injury while operating a motor vehicle with a Schedule I or II controlled substance or its metabolite in her blood and causing the death of or catastrophic injury to Smith under the same circumstances, according to the complaint. Beaty, who was 18 at the time of the accident, received a six-year prison sentence.
Smith died from pneumonia more than a year after the accident.
Beaty spent eight months incarcerated before she was exonerated last year with help from the Notre Dame Law School’s Exoneration Justice Clinic. Her conviction was based on charges supported by “fabricated expert opinions and a false eyewitness statement,” the lawsuit states.
She is seeking a jury trial in addition to compensatory damages, coverage of attorney’s fees and costs from the defendants, punitive damages and any other relief the court deems appropriate.
“Ms. Beaty seeks justice for the harm she suffered and to make sure this misconduct does not occur again,” her attorneys stated in the lawsuit.
Beaty’s car was hit by Smith’s motorcycle while she was waiting to turn at an intersection after driving home from a shift working at Dairy Queen.
During the criminal trial, the state’s key evidence that Beaty caused the accident came from accident reconstruction expert Timothy Spencer, a defendant and investigator with the St. Joseph County Prosecutor’s Office and commander of the St. Joseph County Fatal Alcohol Crash Team. Spencer filed a false report claiming that Smith’s motorcycle as going between 37 and 42 mph when the accident happened, the lawsuit states.
Spencer and representatives of St. Joseph County and Mishawaka did not immediately return calls seeking comment Friday from The Indiana Lawyer.
After the accident, Beaty sent Spencer a Facebook Live video Smith was filming up until the crash. According to the lawsuit, Spencer would later admit that depending on which landmarks were depicted, Smith was traveling anywhere from 48.2 to 129.1 mph.
The video showed Smith was traveling at more than 100 mph, according to a press release from Notre Dame Law School’s Exoneration Justice Clinic, which helped to secure Beaty’s 2025 exoneration.
It also showed that while driving toward the scene, Smith “at times had his eyes off the road, was standing upright with his hands outstretched and had his hands off the handlebars of the motorcycle,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit also states that an investigator with the St. Joseph Police Department falsely claimed Beaty was impaired and had used cannabis the day of the accident.
After the accident, Beaty’s blood was tested for THC after being transported to the hospital. Only a low level of THC was found, which barely exceeded the testing threshold. According to court documents, it was undisputed that this level of THC could be in someone’s blood several days after using marijuana.
“Defendants never had probable cause to initiate charges,” the lawsuit reads.
The case is Kara Beaty v. St. Joseph County, City of Mishawaka, et. al, 3:26-cv-01199.
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