State v. Handy

• Decision Date: 17 March 1942
• Docket Number: No. 45855.,45855.
• Citation: 2 N.W.2d 763,231 Iowa 1037
• Parties: STATE v. HANDY.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

231 Iowa 1037

2 N.W.2d 763

STATE

v.HANDY.

No. 45855.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

March 17, 1942.

Appeal from District Court, Dickinson County; Fred M. Hudson, Judge.

Defendant was tried on an indictment charging manslaughter. Convicted by a jury he was sentenced to the reformatory at Anamosa for a term of eight years. He appeals.

Reversed and remanded with instructions.

W. B. Bedell, of Spirit Lake, for appellant.

John M. Rankin, Atty. Gen., of Iowa, Jens Grothe, Asst. Atty. Gen., of Iowa, and W. E. Hanson, Co. Atty. of Dickinson County, Iowa, and H. E. Narey, Sp. Asst. Co. Atty. of Dickinson County, both of Spirit Lake, Iowa, for appellee.

SAGER, Justice.

On August 16, 1941, defendant was driving his car from Spencer to Spirit Lake starting about 7:30 o'clock P. M. With him were three companions. At a place between Arnolds Park and Spirit Lake occurred the accident out of which this cause arises. Defendant's car was the last of a string estimated from three to five, all proceeding northward on highway No. 71, 100 feet apart and at a speed of from 25 to 35 miles an hour. Immediately ahead of defendant was a car driven by one Stratman who had as passengers three young ladies and a small boy. At this time a car driven by Packebush was approaching from the north at about 30 miles per hour. With him was Mrs. Lamb in the front seat: in the back seat, her husband and two children. There was no dispute that the night was dark; the pavement, wet and slippery. No one denies that intermittently it was raining hard and drizzling. All cars were proceeding “dim”. One witness, and she the only one who attempted to speak definitely on the subject, said at the time of the collision it was raining “pretty hard.”

It is to be noted that all cars were proceeding in their proper lane. The accident occurred so suddenly that no witness was able to give any distinct account of just how it happened. Packebush testified: “The road is straight. I saw 3 or 4 cars come toward me as we approached scene of the accident. There was a car to my left at the time of the collision. I was just about flush with it. About the time my lights were in the middle of the car I was meeting, a light flashed up in front of me in my lane. They were the lights of the Handy car. There was a crash and a collision which stopped the cars.”

Mrs. Lamb was so badly injured that she died just a few moments after reaching the hospital at Spirit Lake. The defendant had a concussion of the brain, a fractured lower jaw and several bruises of the head and body. One tooth was driven into the upper jaw bone and two other teeth were broken. None of the occupants of the Stratman car saw the collision occur. One said “we had a bump and I heard a crash.”

Defendant's version of the affair is this:

“When I was about at the scene of the accident Harold Smoot (in the front seat with defendant) said, ‘Watch out,’ and I put on my brakes to slow down and I jerked my car to the left and I seen another car's head lights ahead of me and I tried to jerk it back. I never got back in time. When I first saw the car in front of me, it was about 15 or 20 feet away. It looked to me like the tail light was not lit, but like my lights were shining on red glass.”

The other occupants of the car added little if anything to this statement. A motion to direct a verdict was made by defendant at the close of the state's testimony, and renewed at the close. Both motions were overruled, the trial court deeming State v. Graff, 228 Iowa 159, 290 N.W. 97, authority for submitting the case to the jury. Herein we think there was error, the Graff case being in no way parallel or analogous to the one at bar.

Up to this point it must be apparent that no more than a negligence case has been presented. The state argues however that the testimony with reference to intoxicating liquor was sufficient to carry the case to the jury. Defendant's companions admit drinking, one of them to the point of intoxication. Defendant and all others who testified on the subject and were in a position to know testified that defendant did not drink. The court instructed that there was no evidence that the defendant was operating his car while in an intoxicated condition but added that evidence “relating to the use of...