Unable to cut a deal with prosecutors that would keep celebrity publicist Lizzie Grubman out of prison, lawyers for the New York woman now believe they have a good chance of getting her acquitted on charges stemming from an accident outside a Hamptons nightclub last summer.

Grubman's lawyer, Stephen Scaring, said the defense will focus on disproving the driving while intoxicated charge a grand jury returned last September against the 31-year-old celebrity party organizer.

The theory, Scaring told Courttv.com, is that if the prosecution cannot prove that Grubman was intoxicated when she backed her SUV into a crowd of people, injuring 16, on July 7, 2001, then prosecutors will not be able to prove the more serious assault charges against her. Grubman was also indicted for felony charges of vehicular assault and second-degree assault.

Under state law, in order to win a conviction on the vehicular assault charge, prosecutors must prove she was driving drunk.

The defense strategy is both interesting legally and a huge gamble. Basically, Grubman's lawyers would be asking a Suffolk County jury to conclude that she wasn't drunk and that her father's $70,000 Mercedes sports utility vehicle instead lurched backward because she put the car in the wrong gear.

So how do they do that?

Police officers investigating the crash at Conscience Point Inn in Southampton did not catch up to Grubman for more than two hours and so no tests were administered to measure her blood-alcohol content. Grubman had already contacted a lawyer and told that to the officers who tried to interview her at the Bridgehampton home of her ex-boyfriend, Andrew Sasson.

The owner of another trendy Hamptons nightclub, Sasson is emerging as a key player in the event the case goes to trial. According to Scaring, Sasson gave a deposition in one of a handful of civil lawsuits that grew out of the accident in which he claimed that he smelled alcohol on Grubman as he drove her to his home.

But Sasson also testified, according to Scaring, that he saw no indications that Grubman was drunk and that he did not know if the alcohol odor was coming from Grubman's breath or from her clothing.

If Grubman does not take a deal, her trial will be held in this Riverhead courthouse.

The New York Post first reported the details of the deposition in its editions Wednesday, a day before Grubman is to appear in Suffolk County Court in Riverhead for another pre-trial conference in Judge John Mullin's chambers. Scaring said a plea agreement is unlikely and he expects Mullin to set a trial date on Thursday.

If the charges make it to trial, Scaring said Sasson's credibility and motives will be challenged. He said there is evidence that Sasson turned on Grubman because detectives told him that they believed Grubman was intoxicated and noted that Sasson could be charged with acting in concert with Grubman to leave the scene of the accident.

They also noted that such a conviction could put Sasson's license to sell liquor in jeopardy.

"We consider that to be an improper threat and we think it will impact on Sasson's credibility," Scaring said.

So if the DWI charge doesn't hold up and the vehicular assault counts cave as a result, how does the defense handle the remaining felony charges of leaving the scene of an accident and second-degree assault?

Grubman will contend that she wanted to stay at the scene but was whisked away by well-meaning friends because she was hysterical. And with the vehicular assault charges closely linked to the issue of intoxication, Scaring said a jury could well conclude that Grubman was guilty of "ordinary negligence" and not negligence of a reckless nature as required by the statute.

Sasson's lawyer, Jeremy Schneider, said Grubman's defense team is clearly "posturing" and that Sasson is prepared to testify truthfully. Schneider said Grubman's main exposure appears to lay in the fact that she backed a vehicle into 16 people.

"He wasn't even there when the incident happened. He was contacted by people at the club," Scheider said of Sasson.

Prosecutor Joy Watson declined to discuss the defense's position on the DWI charge or Sasson's value to the case specifically. "It's not my practice to anticipate or speculate as to what a witness would say at trial," she said of Sasson.

Watson said she is proceeding as if there is going to be a trial and is prepared to prosecute Grubman on all the charges contained in the indictment.

"In terms of the level of the crimes, the assault charge is a class D felony and leaving the scene is a class E felony," Watson said. "They are both felony charges that expose her to upstate incarceration."

"Upstate" is a reference to upstate New York and its many forbidding penal institutions. Edward Burke Jr., Grubman's Southampton lawyer, reportedly toured the relatively comfortable Suffolk County Jail in Riverhead last month in anticipation of a possible plea agreement that would have permitted Grubman to serve a short sentence locally followed by a period of probation in exchange for guilty pleas.

If tried and convicted on all the counts, Grubman faces more than eight years in state prison.