Trinity Broadcasting Company Pastor Sentenced for DUI Crash

On April 26, 2009, Stephen Eugene Galiher crashed into a car on a freeway in Costa Mesa, California, while driving over 85 miles per hour and three times over the legal drinking limit on his way to the headquarters of Trinity Broadcasting Company (TBN). Galiher is the head pastor at Trinity Music City Church, the main place of worship at TBN’s Christian music theme park in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and was in town after appearing four days earlier on Behind the Scenes, a show where TBN head Paul Crouch checks in with his many ministers.

Galiher smashed into the car driven by 70-year-old Vietnam War veteran David Rhodes, which overturned twice, leaving Rhodes in the hospital with four broken ribs, a broken arm and leg, and pins in his vertebrae. He passed away six months after the debilitating accident.

A California Highway Patrol report obtained by The OC Weekly shows that the officer on hand "smell[ed] a very strong odor of an alcoholic beverage coming from Galiher’s breath and, his eyes were red and bloodshot." When asked what he drank, the pastor admitted to "2 glasses of red wine at the Newport Beach Island Hotel." He then failed all sobriety field tests and was arrested for DUI.

Nearly a year later, Galiher was finally sentenced by an Orange County judge for his crime—but he was given only five years of probation, to pay restitution, and to stay away from alcohol for the next five years.

Gustavo Arellano of the OC Weekly writes that Galiher walked into a Harbor Justice Center courtroom flanked by two attorneys. The family of Rhodes–his wife Julicort, who survived the crash but is still undergoing physical therapy, and son Tom–followed, sitting on the other side of the courtroom, accompanied by senior deputy district attorney Dan Hess. After about 20 minutes in the judge’s chambers, the attorneys for the both sides emerged, and Commissioner James Odriozola ordered court in session.

Both Rhodes’ wife and his son addressed the court. Fighting back tears, Julicort told Commissioner Odriozola how she and her husband were planning to "make our dreams together" but that her life and that of their young children was now "shattered into pieces." Tom Rhodes began his remarks by holding out graphic pictures of his bedridden father so that Galiher could see the damage he had wrought. Standing behind a lectern that he repositioned so he could directly address Galiher, Rhodes also read a letter by his cancer-stricken sister, who was too ill to appear.

He spared Galiher nothing, mocking his former standing as one of TBN’s stars. "Would Jesus have gotten obliteratedly drunk?" Rhodes trembled, choking back tears. "Would Jesus have stayed in the car and not help the people he crashed into?" Galiher looked on silently and occasionally sniffling.

"You discredited your employer, and disgraced the tenets of Christianity," Rhodes concluded. "As a Christian, I pray that the Lord show you mercy, but I pray that the state of California does not."

After Tom left the lecturn, Galiher turned to the Rhodes family to say he was "deeply remorseful and extremely sorry."

A visibly moved Odriozola called for a recess and then rendered his verdict: his hands were bound by the law. Galiher had pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and causing injury and DUI over .08 BAC causing injury, both felonies. Though the maximum penalty for the crime was three years in state prison, the OC DA’s office had only asked the judge to sentence Galiher to four more months of house confinement and five years probation. Hess told Odriozola that the DA’s office had looked into trying Galiher on vehicular manslaughter charges, but couldn’t establish enough evidence to make a plausible case (Rhodes’ official cause of death was acute respiratory failure brought on by pneumonia, but the 70-year-old had led an active lifestyle swimming and playing tennis just before his car accident).

Galiher had already spent 90 days in an alcoholism clinic and four months under house arrest at his Tennessee home before facing any sentence. The fact that Galiher expressed remorse and completed his alcoholism program and house arrest without incident convinced Odriozola to reject Hess’ request for more jail time for Galiher. "If I wanted to give you more time," Odriozola told Galiher, "I’m constrained by the law not to."