State v. Kline
| Citation | 209 N.W. 881,168 Minn. 263 |
| Decision Date | 16 July 1926 |
| Docket Number | 25,410 |
| Parties | STATE v. M. F KLINE |
| Court | Supreme Court of Minnesota (US) |
Defendant appealed from an order of the district court for Hennepin county, Nordbye, J., denying his motion for a new trial after conviction of manslaughter in the second degree Molyneaux, J. Affirmed.
Conviction for second degree manslaughter sustained by evidence that accused drove his automobile while drunk.
1. The evidence supports a conviction of manslaughter in the second degree, in that defendant while drunk drove his automobile in a culpably negligent manner against a pedestrian causing death.
State need not show victim was not negligent or did not die as result of unavoidable accident.
2. It was not incumbent on the state to show that the one killed was not negligent or that death was not the result of an unavoidable accident.
Presumption that intoxicated person is negligent when he drives an automobile.
3. The court correctly charged the jury that since the statute makes it an offense for an intoxicated person to drive an automobile the presumption arises that one so doing is negligent. In that connection the court also stated that culpable negligence must be shown beyond a reasonable doubt in the act which caused the homicide.
Proper to call attention of jury to statutes regulating driver of motor vehicles on highway.
4. It was proper to state to the jury the statutory provision regulating the driving of motor vehicles upon the highway.
Court not to allow counsel to state law inaccurately to jury.
5. The trial court should not permit counsel in their argument to the jury to state the law inaccurately.
Evidence to show defendant's intoxication proper.
6.Where one of the issues was intoxication of defendant, when the injury resulting in the homicide was inflicted, evidence of defendant's acts sufficiently close to bear upon that issue was proper.
Criminal Law, 16 C.J. p. 913 n. 4, 5; p. 953 n. 35; p. 962 n. 6; p. 1063 n. 85.
Homicide, 29 C.J. p. 1155 n. 4; p. 1156 n. 18 New; 30 C.J. p. 146 n. 41 New; p. 204 n. 85; p. 317 n. 73.
Motor Vehicles, 28 Cyc. p. 49 n. 56 New.
See notes in 16 A.L.R. 914; 21 A.L.R. 1504; 27 A.L.R. 1182; 30 A.L.R. 66; 2 R.C.L. p. 1212; 1 R.C.L. Supp. p. 748; 4 R.C.L. Supp. p. 164; 5 R.C.L. Supp. p. 151.
See note in L.R.A. 1917A, 313.
William M. Nash and Chester L. Nichols, for appellant.
Clifford L. Hilton, Attorney General, James E. Markham, Deputy Attorney General, and Floyd B. Olson, County Attorney, for respondent.
Defendant was convicted of manslaughter in the second degree, and appeals from the order denying a new trial. The indictment charged in substance that defendant being intoxicated drove his automobile at a higher speed than reasonable and in a culpably careless manner against Joseph Stodola, causing his death. The facts developed at the trial were in short these: In the afternoon of July 15, 1924, defendant, with two friends, went in his automobile from Minneapolis to Waconia to fish. On his way out he purchased a bottle of whiskey. It was consumed and another bottle was procured when in the evening they left Waconia. Frequent stops were made on the road at which defendant partook of the liquor. Shortly before 11 o'clock he turned off the Excelsior boulevard, on which he had been driving, near the cemetery, about a mile west of Hopkins. Defendant's handling of the car was by that time so reckless and inefficient that his companions did not dare to ride with him, but got out after vain attempts to let one of them drive. After his friends left, he turned around and started back towards Excelsior, passed the Glenn Lake store, and in a short time came back to the store where he asked a person to help him straighten his right front light, which was bent back at an angle of 45 degrees. They were unable to do so. He drove on to Hopkins, where he was apprehended by an officer, who had received information that Stodola had been picked up unconscious and wounded about six blocks west of the Glenn Lake store. Defendant's car had blood not yet dry and gray hairs upon the right front light (bent as stated); and between the hood and the right fender were parts of two teeth. Stodola was 69 years old and besides other wounds had received a broken jaw with teeth knocked out. At the trial defendant denied having seen Stodola on the road and asserted that the light was bent when he struck a tree in turning around in the road shortly before coming back to the store, but on the oral argument here his counsel frankly admitted that the evidence is conclusive that defendant's car struck down Stodola. It was also conclusively proven that defendant was then intoxicated to such a degree as to be incapable of driving an automobile at any rate of speed without endangering life, or limb or property.
The first contention is that the evidence does not support the conviction. It is said the state produced no eye witness of the tragedy; no one who saw how defendant was driving at the moment of the impact; negligence in never presumed; this may have been an unavoidable accident; or may have been due to the negligence of Stodola; and it was for the state to negative accidental injury and negligence of the victim. These contentions are fallacious. The state had no greater burden than to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant was culpably negligent in driving his automobile against Stodola so as to cause his death. When that is done any other cause of the homicide is negatived. Negligence of the victim would not be a defense, State v. Peterson, 153 Minn. 310, 190 N.W. 345. We do not mean to hold that, if the defense to the homicide was unavoidable accident, negligence of the victim might not be shown. But no such issue or defense was raised by the evidence. There can be no doubt of the sufficiency of the proof. Defendant was drunk. The law makes it a crime for a person in that condition to drive a car. The law also makes it the duty of the driver of a car at night to have it lit so that objects in front upon the highway may be seen, and defines how pedestrians should be warned and safeguarded. Defendant either was so drunk that he could not see, or if he saw had not the ability to give warning or to avoid striking Stodola. There is evidence from which the jury could find that Stodola was walking west, north of the center line of the road, as defendant was coming east driving south of the center line, and that within a few feet of Stodola defendant swerved abruptly to the north of the center line striking him down with the right front light and fender of the automobile, and dragging him some 20 feet easterly.
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