REDWOOD CITY – A 54-year-old El Granada man accused of hitting and killing an Apple software engineer on a windy mountain road in La Honda nearly eight years ago has pleaded no contest to felony vehicular manslaughter, according to prosecutors.
Tom Shelton Doane was actually found guilty of the same charge in 2017, but a state appeals court reversed the conviction four years later. San Mateo County prosecutors refiled the charge; rather than face a second trial, Doane entered a no contest plea Monday, District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said.
Doane was sentenced to seven years in state prison. However, with credit for time already served, he will not spend another day behind bars, according to Wagstaffe.
Judge Sean Dabel also ordered Doane to pay more than $1 million in restitution to the victim’s widow.
The fatal traffic collision happened in the 7400 block of La Honda Road on March 27, 2016. Francois Jouaux, 46, of Woodside, was returning home after a day of kitesurfing when Doane crossed into the opposing lane and hit him head-on. Doane’s Ford F-250 then continued over Jouaux’s Honda Civic, causing the lethal injuries.
Jouaux was pronounced dead at the scene. Doane, meanwhile, left the area and later showed up at a hospital in Redwood City with a badly mangled left arm and hand.
Jouaux’s death left his family reeling. In an interview with this news organization shortly after he died, Jouaux’s wife, Arancha Casal, recalled her husband as a “wonderful father” who knew how to expertly balance work and play. When he wasn’t working at Apple, he was kitesurfing, windsurfing
, skiing, snowboarding and fishing.
“Whenever the weekend came, he didn’t just sit in front of the computer or read a book,” she said at the time. “He would just go out and have fun but in a happy way.”
On Nov. 22, 2017, a jury found Doane guilty of felony vehicular manslaughter and felony hit-and-run involving injury to another, according to prosecutors. He was sentenced to 11 years in state prison.
Doane appealed the convictions. On July 22, 2021, the California First District Court of Appeal ruled that “the prosecutor misstated the law involving circumstantial evidence in closing argument and that the trial court incorrectly answered a jury question about the use of post-crash conduct to find gross negligence.”
The appeals court affirmed the hit-and-run conviction but reversed the vehicular manslaughter conviction. Prosecutors were told they could retry Doane for the latter crime.
Following talks between his defense attorney and the prosecutor assigned to the case, Doane agreed to plead no contest to felony vehicular manslaughter in exchange for the seven-year prison sentence, according to Wagstaffe. Doane initially wanted to plead no contest to misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter, but the prosecutor was unwilling to grant that request.
Wagstaffe said his office could have taken the case to trial again and sought a longer sentence than what Doane ultimately received, but the no-contest plea was sufficient.
“The victim’s family wanted it to come to a conclusion. My prosecutor felt this was the best way to bring it to a conclusion,” Wagstaffe said. “We got our felony conviction.”
