City of Minneapolis v. Altimus

• Decision Date: 09 January 1976
• Docket Number: No. 44770,44770
• Parties: State of Minnesota, CITY OF MINNEAPOLIS, Respondent, v. Robert William ALTIMUS, Appellant.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

Page 851

238 N.W.2d 851

306 Minn. 462

State of Minnesota, CITY OF MINNEAPOLIS, Respondent, v. Robert William ALTIMUS, Appellant.

No. 44770.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Jan. 9, 1976.

Syllabus by the Court

1. Under Minn.St. 609.075, voluntary intoxication through use of liquor or drugs is a defense to a criminal charge only if a specific intent, motive, or purpose is an essential element of the crime charged and then only in the sense that the trier of fact may take such intoxication into consideration in determining the existence of such intent, motive, or purpose. Such defense has no application to traffic offenses which do not require proof of specific intent.

2. With respect to traffic offenses requiring proof of a general criminal intent or negligence, a defendant's temporary insanity due to involuntary intoxication is a defense where the defendant establishes by a preponderance of the evidence that he committed the act or acts constituting the offense while laboring under such a defect of reason from that involuntary intoxication as not to know the nature of his act or that it was wrong.

3. When a defendant has ingested a drug taken pursuant to medical advice, the defense of temporary insanity due to involuntary intoxication is available only where the defendant ingested the drug without knowing, or having reason to know, that the drug would be likely to have an intoxicating effect.

4. Upon this record, defendant, charged with careless driving in violation of Minn.St. 169.13, subd. 2, and hit and run as to an attended vehicle in violation of § 169.09, subd. 2, was entitled to submission to the jury of the defense of temporary insanity due to involuntary intoxication.

C. Paul Jones, Public Defender, Roger Magnuson, Special Asst. Public Defender, Minneapolis, for appellant.

Considered by the court without oral argument and reconsidered and decided by the court en banc.

KELLY, Justice.

Defendant, who was found guilty by a Hennepin County Municipal Court jury of careless driving, Minn.St. 169.13, subd. 2, and hit and run as to an attended vehicle, Minn.St. 169.09, subd. 2, and not guilty of simple assault, Minneapolis Code of Ordinances, § 870.160, ¹ was sentenced by the trial court to terms of 30 and 90 days in the workhouse, sentences to be served concurrently with revocation of parole from Federal prison. On this appeal from judgment of conviction, defendant contends that he should receive a new trial because (1) the trial court erred in refusing to instruct the jury on the defense of involuntary intoxication, and (2) the trial court erred in its instructions on the element of intent with respect to the two traffic charges of which he was convicted. After careful consideration, we hold that the trial court erred in refusing to instruct the jury on the defense of temporary insanity due to involuntary intoxication and that a new trial is required.

At 12:15 p.m. on September 28, 1973, defendant, driving south on Hiawatha Avenue, made an illegal left turn from the right-hand lane and crashed into a garbage truck proceeding northward on Hiawatha. Immediately after impact, defendant backed up and drove easterly on Lake Street at a slow speed. This slow speed resulted from the fact that the automobile defendant was driving had been badly damaged in the collision. Policemen who observed the accident followed defendant and stopped him about a block from the point of impact. Defendant, who appeared to one of the officers to be somewhat confused, told the officers that his head and shoulder hurt and asked to be taken to the hospital. In response to questions by the officers, defendant, who gave 'William Jones' as his name, stated that he did not have his driver's license with him but showed the officers a paper purporting to be a transfer of title from Robert Altimus to William Jones.

Because of a gap in the evidence, we do not know for certain what happened next but it appears that an ambulance took defendant to General Hospital and defendant ran away after police discovered his true identity. In any event, we have the testimony on an off-duty uniformed police officer that at about 1:30 p.m. he was on his way to the Minnesota Auto Body Shop at Seventh Street and Park Avenue when another officer told him to be on the lookout for a man fitting defendant's description and that when he got to the body shop he saw the defendant. He testified that defendant refused to identify himself and ran toward the General Hospital construction area, where an altercation occurred when the officer caught him; that defendant then ran to a church at Seventh Street and Chicago Avenue where he broke the officer's nose; and that finally he was apprehended at the St. Barnabas School of Nursing.

At trial, the defense did not dispute the evidence adduced by the state, but introduced evidence designed to show that defendant did not have the requisite state of mind to be guilty of either simple assault or the two remaining traffic charges. Defendant testified that on September 25, 1973, three days before the incident, he had seen a doctor at the Veterans Administration Hospital for treatment of a back problem and the flu and that the doctor had prescribed Valium, which he had taken as prescribed. He testified that on September 28 the Valium began to have a strange effect on him, making it impossible for him to control himself. He testified that he did not know who owned the automobile which he had driven, and that he remembered nothing about the accident or the events that followed.

The only other defense witness was Dr. Humberto Ortiz, the doctor who treated defendant at the Veterans Administration Hospital. He testified that he prescribed the Valium because it was a skeletal muscle relaxant and was the type of drug which would relieve the acute back pain defendant had been experiencing. He testified that he also prescribed empirin, bed rest, and heat. Dr. Ortiz listed drowsiness, fatigue, ataxia, and confusion as the normal side effects of Valium. He testified, however, that hyperexcitability, although more rare, was also a possible side effect. On cross-examination, he stated that he did not know if the drug might cause one to be confused as to his identity; but in response to a hypothetical question stating the facts of the case, he expressed the opinion that defendant might have been suffering from the effects of the drug.

After resting, the defense requested the trial court to instruct on the defense of involuntary intoxication and submitted proposed instructions to that effect, ² but the trial court refused to instruct on the defense or to give these instructions. The trial judge did instruct the jury that defendant's alleged intoxication would be a defense to the charge of assault if it rendered him unable to formulate the specific intent to inflict bodily harm on the person of another which is an essential element of the crime of assault. We do not express an opinion as to the propriety of this voluntary intoxication instruction on the assault charge, but we note that we have not decided whether that defense applies to simple assault cases. See State v. Olson, 298 Minn. 551, 214 N.W.2d 777 (1974).

The general rule in Minnesota is that voluntary intoxication is a defense to a criminal charge other than drunkenness ³ only if a specific intent or purpose is an essential element of the crime charged and the trier of fact concluded that the defendant's intoxication deprived him of the specific intent or purpose requisite to the alleged offense. ⁴ Because of traffic offenses with which defendant was charged do not require a specific intent to do a prohibited act, the defense of voluntary intoxication cannot and does not apply to those offenses.

While general traffic offenses do not require that the wrongdoer specifically intend to commit the crime for which he is charged, we have held that before criminal liability can attach it is essential that the defendant intentionally or negligently do the act which constitutes the crime. State v. Kremer, 262 Minn. 190, 114 N.W.2d 88 (1962). In Kremer we reversed the conviction of a defendant who unintentionally and non-negligently drove through a stop signal because his brakes failed. ⁵ We acknowledged there that a defendant may be held criminally responsible for some activities, even though he does not criminally intend the harm caused by his acts, because he 'usually is in a position to prevent it with no more care than society might reasonably expect and no more exertion than it might reasonably exact from one who assumed his responsibilities.' 262 Minn. 192, 114 N.W.2d 89, (quoting from Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 256, 72 S.Ct. 240, 246, 96 L.Ed. 288, 297 (1952)). When that duty of due care is breached, the driver may properly be found criminally responsible for a traffic offense. We reversed the defendant's conviction in Kremer because the above rationale did not apply when there was no negligence by the defendant and no intent to do the act which turned out to be criminal. The unusual issue presented on this appeal is whether the defendant is entitled to assert the defense of involuntary intoxication if due to such intoxication he unintentionally and non-negligently did the acts for which he is charged. In brief, we hold that defendant was entitled to an instruction on involuntary intoxication, that the trial court erred in refusing to grant such an instruction, and that a new trial is required.

We begin our analysis of the defense of involuntary intoxication by considering its origins and its relationship to the partial defense of voluntary intoxication. The common-law rule was that voluntary intoxication was never a defense to a criminal charge. Thus, in the first English report of a drunken homicide, Baron Peake formulated the rule that '(v)oluntary drunkenness is no excuse for crime.' Pearson's Case, 168 Eng.Rep. 1108, 2 Lew.Cr.Cas. 144, 145 (1...