State v. Giles

• Decision Date: 15 December 1925
• Docket Number: No. 36920.,36920.
• Citation: 206 N.W. 133,200 Iowa 1232
• Parties: STATE v. GILES.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

200 Iowa 1232

206 N.W. 133

STATE

v.GILES.

No. 36920.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Dec. 15, 1925.

Appeal from District Court, Pottawattamie County; Earl Peters, Judge.

The defendant was indicted for the crime of operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated. Upon a verdict of guilty, the court imposed a sentence of one year in the penitentiary. The defendant appeals. Affirmed.Verne Benjamin, of Council Bluffs, for appellant.

Ben J. Gibson, Atty. Gen., and Neill Garrett, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

EVANS, J.

Two grounds for reversal are presented: (1) That the conviction is not sustained by the evidence; (2) that the punishment was excessive.

We cannot say that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the conviction. Whether the evidence was such as to justify the maximum sentence is a question not free from perplexity. The very nature of the offense in its most mitigated form involves so much of danger to human life as to call for severe punishment. That one case may be more aggravated than another is nevertheless true, and the degree of punishment should be governed by the degree of aggravation. The defendant is a laboring man, engaged as a plumber, and has a family of a wife and two children. He was driving in the city of Council Bluffs between 12 and 1 p. m., on his way to his work at Omaha. He drove first to a filling station, and obtained gasoline. From there he drove to the tollhouse at the Council Bluffs end of the Douglas street bridge. This was two blocks away from the filling station. He stopped at the tollhouse, and paid his toll, and was there arrested by police officers who had observed him in his approach, and some of whom had followed him in a motorcycle. He was driving at the rate of from 20 to 35 miles an hour, and passed three cars as he approached the tollhouse. The street in that vicinity was congested with traffic. The defendant had sufficient control of his car to avoid all contact with other vehicles. There was no accident of any kind. The degree of his intoxication is much in dispute in the evidence. The man in charge of the filling station saw no signs of intoxication upon him. Blankenship, who rode with him, saw none. Another witness who talked with him saw none. He had no beverage upon his person, or in his car, though witnesses testified that they could smell intoxicating liquor upon his breath.

[1][2] Granting, therefore, that the circumstances attending this particular offense were not aggravating, in the...