People v. Saavedra-Rodriguez
| Decision Date | 01 May 1997 |
| Docket Number | No. 96CA0481,D,SAAVEDRA-RODRIGUE,96CA0481 |
| Citation | 949 P.2d 86 |
| Parties | 21 Colorado Journal 632 The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Patricioefendant-Appellant. . I |
| Court | Colorado Court of Appeals |
Gale A. Norton, Attorney General, Stephen K. ErkenBrack, Chief Deputy Attorney General, Timothy M. Tymkovich, Solicitor General, Catherine P. Adkisson, Assistant Attorney General, Denver, for Plaintiff-Appellee.
David F. Vela, Colorado State Public Defender, Joan E. Mounteer, Deputy State Public Defender, Denver, for Defendant-Appellant.
Opinion by Judge NEY.
Defendant, Patricio Saavedra-Rodriguez, appeals the judgment of conviction entered on a jury verdict finding him guilty of manslaughter as a lesser-included offense of second degree murder. We reverse and remand for a new trial.
Defendant contends the trial court erred by not allowing him to present an "intervening cause" defense premised on a claim that the victim's death resulted from grossly negligent medical care. We agree.
Defendant stabbed the victim in the chest with a knife. After police officers responded to an emergency call and located the victim, he was transported to a hospital. When the victim arrived at the hospital he was conscious, talking, and able to assist in moving himself from the ambulance cot to the emergency room stretcher. However, the victim's condition quickly deteriorated and, after unsuccessful emergency surgery was performed, he died.
An autopsy disclosed that the knife had penetrated approximately four and one-half inches into the victim's chest cavity. The knife punctured a lung and cut the victim's heart.
Prior to trial, the prosecution filed a motion seeking to prevent defendant from presenting an intervening cause defense. The prosecution argued that even if the medical treatment provided to the victim at the hospital was sub-standard, it did not constitute an intervening cause of the victim's death.
At a pre-trial hearing on the motion, defendant presented evidence establishing that there were two physicians who treated the victim in the emergency room. According to an "incident report" prepared by one of the doctors, the other surgeon provided sub-standard care to the victim in a variety of ways. The report asserted that the surgeon initially failed to recognize the possibility of a serious internal injury, failed to undertake procedures necessary to remove accumulated blood from the victim's chest, withheld administration of additional fluids and units of blood, called off the "Trauma Red" alert which had been called to summon an anesthesiologist, and failed promptly to initiate a thoracotomy despite the fact the victim was in "arrest."
The report further detailed how, once he did perform a thoracotomy, the surgeon failed to find the cut of the victim's heart, discontinued cardiac massage, and refused to approve a resuscitative procedure whereby blood is administered directly to the heart. The second physician's report explained that he resumed the cardiac massage and, when the surgeon directed him to discontinue temporarily plugging the heart laceration, he refused. The report observed that the surgeon had not undertaken aortic cross-clamping in a timely manner and that, when he finally did, he may have caused a "caval injury."
In two written orders, the trial court ruled that defendant had failed to present evidence warranting presentation of an intervening cause defense. The trial court reasoned that, even if the medical treatment provided to the victim was grossly negligent, it had not contributed to the victim's death because the victim would have died even if he had received no medical care at all. Although the court acknowledged that there was...
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People v. Saavedra-Rodriguez
...allowed to present evidence of inadequate medical treatment as the intervening cause of the victim's death. See People v. Saavedra-Rodriguez, 949 P.2d 86, 88 (Colo.App.1997). The trial court determined that the defendant had not offered sufficient evidence to submit an intervening cause def......