State v. McGill, 163A85

• Decision Date: 05 November 1985
• Docket Number: No. 163A85,163A85
• Parties: STATE of North Carolina v. Kim Riley McGILL.
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

Page 90

336 S.E.2d 90

314 N.C. 633

STATE of North Carolina v. Kim Riley McGILL.

No. 163A85.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Nov. 5, 1985.

Lacy H. Thornburg, Atty. Gen. by Charles J. Murray, Sp. Deputy Atty. Gen., Raleigh, for the State of N.C., appellant.

Robert D. Jacobson, Lumberton, for defendant-appellee.

MARTIN, Justice.

The single issue before this Court is whether, in a prosecution for manslaughter, the state must prove not only that the defendant was driving under the influence and that this proximately caused the victim's death, but that the defendant's intoxication caused him to violate some other rule of the road that in turn caused his death. We hold that only one causal link must be shown--that between the intoxication and the death. No additional misconduct need be alleged.

Around midnight of 26 April 1983, a state trooper arrived at the scene of a two-car accident on a paved, rural road. He found defendant and a passenger standing beside a Chrysler automobile, watching the other car, up-ended, burn in a roadside ditch. Defendant told the officer that he had rounded a curve, driven a short distance, and suddenly seen a car parked in the middle of the road with its lights off. Defendant said he had then slammed on his brakes and skidded into the other car, flipping it into the ditch. He told the officer that he and his passenger had attempted to free the occupants of the burning car but were prevented from doing so by an explosion and flames. The occupants of the car were killed.

The trooper noticed a strong odor of alcohol on defendant's breath and saw that defendant was unsteady on his feet. He found a half-gallon bottle of whiskey, its seal broken, in defendant's car. A breathalyzer test administered two hours later revealed defendant's blood alcohol level to be 0.19 percent. Defendant's driver's license had been permanently revoked, and his record indicated numerous driving violations, including five convictions for driving under the influence.

An investigation of the accident scene revealed that defendant's car had been travelling about 55 m.p.h., the speed limit, and that it had travelled 450 feet after the curve before colliding with the victims' car. Investigators found defendant's car had left forty-eight feet of skid marks before the impact and thirty feet after, and they determined that defendant's car had been travelling at 35 m.p.h. on impact. Inspection of the victims' car revealed that both the lights and ignition were in the "on" position and that the transmission was in "drive."

The Court of Appeals considered a number of defendant's motions challenging the sufficiency of the evidence. It found ample evidence to support the jury's guilty verdicts regarding defendant's driving while his license was permanently revoked, driving under the influence of alcoholic beverages, and transporting liquor with the seal broken.

Defendant also challenged his conviction of two counts of involuntary manslaughter, based upon what he contended were erroneous jury instructions. The trial judge had instructed the jury that, in order to find defendant guilty of involuntary manslaughter, it must find three things: (1) that defendant had violated any one of the motor vehicle laws of this state; (2) that the violation constituted culpable negligence; ¹ and (3) that the violation of that law was the proximate cause of the deaths in this case.

The Court of Appeals found that circumstantial and expert evidence concerning the accident was sufficient to support the jury's verdict of involuntary manslaughter, but not to compel that verdict. The trial judge's jury instructions were held to be in error. We agree that the evidence is sufficient to support defendant's conviction for manslaughter; however, we find the reasoning of the Court of Appeals concerning the jury instructions to be misguided.

The chief concern of the Court of Appeals' review was the causal connection between defendant's intoxication and the accident. Certainly causation is an indispensable element of the proof of manslaughter, as this Court has consistently held. See, e.g., State v. Lowery, 223 N.C. 598, 27 S.E.2d 638 (1943); State v. Cope, 204 N.C. 28, 167 S.E. 456 (1933). In this instance, however, the appellate court's legitimate concern with causation seems to have engendered its error.

The Court of Appeals held that the jury must find not only a causal link between defendant's driving under the influence of alcohol and the victim's death, but another, interconnecting violation: "in order to convict an impaired driver of involuntary manslaughter based upon his impairment, the state must show that while driving impaired defendant violated some other rule of the road, and that this violation was the proximate cause of the accident." State v. McGill, 73 N.C.App. 206, 213, 326 S.E.2d 345, 350 (1985) (emphases added).

The court below relied for its holding upon a rule reportedly set out in Lowery, 223 N.C. 598, 27 S.E.2d 638, which the Court of Appeals interpreted to require "that the evidence must also show reckless driving or other misconduct on the part of defendant resulting from the intoxication which shows a proximate causal relation between the breach of the drunk-driving statute and the death of the victim." 73 N.C.App. at 211, 326 S.E.2d at 349. In Lowery, the two statutes that allegedly had been violated were one prohibiting driving under the influence and one requiring the use of turn signals. The court's concern in that case was twofold: the causal relation between the violation and the death, ² and a rule from Cope, 204 N.C. 28, 167 S.E. 456, that the inadvertent or careless accomplishment of an act prohibited by statute but not in itself dangerous would not signify culpable negligence. ³ The language in Lowery upon which the Court of Appeals relied was focused not upon the culpable negligence element, as the appellate court assumed, but upon the indispensable causal link: "The violation of the statutes referred to herein, if conceded, is not sufficient to sustain a prosecution for involuntary manslaughter unless a causal relation is shown between the breach of the statute and the death...." 223 N.C. at 601, 27 S.E.2d at 640 (emphasis added). ⁴

By its decision the Court of Appeals seeks to engraft an additional requirement to the proof of involuntary manslaughter while driving under the influence of alcohol. Neither Lowery nor Atkins v. Moye, 277 N.C. 179, 176 S.E.2d 789 (1970), supports the holding in McGill, 73 N.C.App. at 213, 326 S.E.2d at 350, that "the state must show that while driving impaired defendant violated some other rule of the road, and that this violation was the proximate cause of the accident." All that is required is that the state show that defendant willfully violated N.C.G.S. 20-138 and that this conduct was one of the proximate causes of the death of the victim. Proof of proximate cause may involve the violation of an additional safety statute, but it is not an essential element of involuntary manslaughter.

We have held that "[i]nvoluntary manslaughter is the unintentional killing of a human being without malice, proximately caused by (1) an unlawful act not amounting to a felony nor naturally dangerous to human life, or (2) a culpably negligent act or omission." State v. Redfern, 291 N.C. 319, 321, 230 S.E.2d 152, 153 (1976); State v. Ward, 286 N.C. 304, 210 S.E.2d 407 (1974). Under the first alternative in this definition, one who causes the death of another merely by violating the statutory prohibition against driving while impaired would be guilty of involuntary manslaughter. However, this...