State v. Garcia, 98-2089.

• Decision Date: 07 September 2000
• Docket Number: No. 98-2089.,98-2089.
• Citation: 616 N.W.2d 594
• Parties: STATE of Iowa, Appellee, v. Alejandro Albarran GARCIA, Appellant.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

616 N.W.2d 594

STATE of Iowa, Appellee, v. Alejandro Albarran GARCIA, Appellant.

No. 98-2089.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

September 7, 2000.

Patricia M. Hulting of Roehrick, Hulting, Krull & Blumberg, P.C., Des Moines, for appellant.

Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Richard J. Bennett, Assistant Attorney General, John P. Sarcone, County Attorney, and Steve Foritano and Frank Severino, Assistant County Attorneys, for appellee.

Considered en banc.

LARSON, Justice.

Alejandro Garcia was convicted in a jury-waived trial of first-degree murder under Iowa Code sections 707.1, 707.2(1), and 707.2(2) (1997). He appealed, and the court of appeals reversed. We granted the State's application for further review and now vacate the decision of the court of appeals and affirm the judgment of the district court.

I. Facts and Prior Proceedings.

We recite the facts in the light most favorable to the verdict. Garcia and four others were hired for $100 each to beat up an individual named Daniel Hernandez Gonzales (Hernandez), who allegedly owed money for drugs. The four of them drove to the victim's home armed with a metal baseball bat, beer bottles, and a gun "just in case" Hernandez was armed. Garcia, with the gun and baseball bat, broke into the victim's trailer home and pushed him down on the couch. Three others followed, while another man remained in the vehicle. Garcia hit Hernandez with the baseball bat, and the others hit him with beer bottles. The victim was able to get loose and run outside. His attackers followed him and began kicking him. When the victim got up, Garcia shot him four times. Garcia and the others fled the scene but were soon apprehended.

The victim was immediately taken to a hospital. Two bullets had struck him in the leg and were not life threatening. The other two wounds would have been fatal without immediate medical attention. One bullet had entered his abdomen and pierced his stomach, liver, and left lung, coming to rest just outside his rib cage. Dr. Francis Garrity, the Polk County Medical Examiner, characterized this wound as "very serious" and would have resulted in the victim's death if not treated. The other wound was from a bullet that grazed the victim's aorta and perforated both lungs. This wound would also have resulted in death if not treated.

Doctors performed surgery on the victim's abdomen and chest. During surgery, there were problems in repairing the holes in the victim's stomach, and gastric contents spilled into the belly area. During surgery on his lower left lung, doctors were forced to remove a substantial portion of the lung.

As a result of the trauma to his lungs, the victim developed Adult Respiratory Disease Syndrome (ARDS), a serious condition that results in death in forty to eighty percent of adult cases. With this condition, the lung becomes so dysfunctional that oxygen is unable to properly move from the airways to the blood stream, requiring the use of mechanical devices such as ventilators. The victim was placed on a ventilator when he was no longer able to breathe on his own. As part of his treatment, he was also placed on a large quantity of fluids, causing him to develop severe swelling. Prior to his death, the victim's condition was steadily and rapidly deteriorating, with a number of organ systems failing.

While the victim was hospitalized and while he was being shaved by a hospital employee, a tracheotomy tube used to connect him to the ventilator was nicked, and the attending physician decided to change the tube to increase the efficiency of the oxygen getting into the lungs. Due to the victim's swollen neck, as the tube was being changed, his airway closed and the attending physician was unable to replace the tube. As a result, the victim asphyxiated. One doctor believed the victim would have died anyway, notwithstanding the tube change, within three or four days. It was this doctor's opinion that the gunshot wounds were the proximate cause of the victim's death and that the medical decisions relating to treatment were part of a chain of events set in motion by the wounds.

Garcia and the others were charged with first-degree murder. Prior to trial, Garcia moved to suppress a letter purportedly written by him while in jail. The letter, written by Garcia to the brother of one of Garcia's codefendants, was intercepted by the codefendant's mother, who gave it to her son's attorney. The letter ultimately reached the State. Garcia moved unsuccessfully to suppress the letter.

As the trial date approached, the State filed a motion for adjudication of law points and a motion to exclude evidence that medical treatment, characterized by Garcia as grossly negligent, was an intervening and superseding cause of the victim's death. The court sustained the State's motion and found as a matter of law that the medical treatment was not a superseding cause of death.

Garcia was tried to the bench and convicted. He appealed, raising as issues the district court's ruling that prevented him from introducing evidence of superseding cause and the court's refusal to suppress the letter.

II. The Ruling Prohibiting Introduction of Evidence of Intervening Cause.

Garcia argues the district court denied him due process of law by depriving him of a defense to which he was entitled. In an offer of proof his expert, Dr. Lawrence Repsher, testified that the doctors' actions in removing the tracheotomy tube from the victim was the cause of his death. Garcia argues this creates a jury question as to causation and that the district court erred in ruling prior to trial that he could not present this evidence. This is the basis on which the court of appeals reversed.

Pursuant to Iowa Rule of Evidence 104(a), the court held a hearing on the admissibility of evidence as to intervening and superseding causes of death. Although Dr. Repsher testified that the victim's death was caused by incompetent medical treatment, the district court held that, even if that were true, it would not "vitiate a causal nexus between the risk [of incompetent treatment] and the act which created it, the shooting." Citing Dr. Repsher's testimony, the court stated that "reasonable minds would not differ in concluding that both the medical decision and the shooting [were] contributing causes to the death of [the victim]." The court held because the removal of the tracheotomy tube was not the sole proximate cause of death, a defense of intervening and superseding cause was not relevant and Garcia could not call Dr. Repsher as an expert witness to establish that defense.

The principles of causation normally associated with civil tort litigation are pertinent in criminal cases. State v. Murray, 512 N.W.2d 547, 550 (Iowa 1994). The rules restricting an actor's responsibility under theories of superseding cause are for the court to apply and not the jury. Id. In determining the legal cause of death, we have endorsed the following principle:

[A]n act is a cause of an event if two conditions are satisfied: the event would not have occurred without the act; [and] the act made the event more likely. The first condition is necessary to distinguish the attempted from the completed crime, the second to rule out cases in which, while the event in question would not have occurred but for the act, the act did not create the kind of dangerous condition that would make such events more likely to occur.

Id. (quoting Brackett v. Peters, 11 F.3d 78, 79 (7th Cir.1993)).

A defendant can be relieved of criminal responsibility if an intervening act breaks the chain of causal connection between the defendant's actions and the victim's death. State v. Wissing, 528 N.W.2d 561, 565 (Iowa 1995). However, for an intervening act to relieve a defendant of criminal responsibility for homicide, the intervening act must be the sole proximate cause of death. Id. In deciding whether medical treatments are superseding causes, we have stated:

"The intervention of a force which is a normal consequence of a situation created by the actor's negligent conduct is not a superseding cause of harm which such conduct has been a substantial factor in bringing about."

Murray, 512 N.W.2d at 551 (quoting Restatement (Second) of Torts § 443 (1965)).

In the pretrial evidentiary hearing, Dr. Repsher's opinion as to the cause of death was that it was the result of medical negligence. In fact, he had harsh words for the treatment rendered the victim. Referring to the removal of the tracheotomy tube, he said

it was outrageous. I mean it was— there was just no—absolutely no reason to do it and all sorts of reasons not to do it. I mean it was just extraordinary.

At another point, the witness testified that removal of the tracheotomy tube (which apparently everyone agrees caused the victim to asphyxiate) was "completely irrational." On cross-examination, however, the doctor agreed the gunshot wounds were sufficient in themselves to cause death in the absence of medical intervention.

The defendant relies on Restatement (Second) of Torts section 443, quoted above, stating that an intervening force that is a "normal consequence" of a defendant's act cannot be a superseding cause of death. In this case, however, the intervening act was not normal according to the defendant; it was "outrageous," and due process demands he be allowed to present it as a defense.

As the Supreme Court has said,

[t]he right to offer the testimony of witnesses, and to compel their attendance, if necessary, is in plain terms the right to present a defense, the right to present the defendant's version of the facts as well as the prosecution's to the jury so it may decide where the truth lies. Just as an accused has the right to confront the prosecution's witnesses for the purpose of challenging their testimony, he has the right to present his own witnesses to establish a defense. This right is a fundamental element of due process of law.

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