State v. Olson

• Decision Date: 07 September 2022
• Docket Number: 55567-1-II
• Parties: STATE OF WASHINGTON, Respondent, v. SYDNEE NICOLE OLSON, Appellant.
• Court: Washington Court of Appeals

STATE OF WASHINGTON, Respondent, v. SYDNEE NICOLE OLSON, Appellant.

No. 55567-1-II

Court of Appeals of Washington, Division 2

September 7, 2022

UNPUBLISHED OPINION

Glasgow, C.J.

Sydnee Nicole Olson drove a friend's car approximately 120 miles per hour before colliding with Douglas Sapp's car. Olson's boyfriend Joseph D. Careaga was a passenger in Olson's vehicle. Sapp was seriously injured and Careaga was killed.

The State charged Olson with vehicular homicide of Careaga and vehicular assault of Sapp. A jury found Olson guilty of both charges and found that Sapp had excessive injuries from the vehicular assault. The trial court imposed a standard range sentence for the vehicular homicide and a concurrent exceptional upward sentence for the vehicular assault.

On appeal, Olson claims that the charging document was constitutionally deficient. She argues the trial court erred by excluding testimony about medications she was prescribed after the collision and by refusing to give the jury an instruction on an alternative means. She contends that she received ineffective assistance of counsel because her attorney withdrew a proposed jury instruction on superseding intervening causes and undermined his own argument for an exceptional downward sentence. Finally, Olson argues that the trial court abused its discretion by refusing to impose an exceptional downward sentence due to her youth. She seeks reversal of her convictions or resentencing by a different judge. We affirm Olson's convictions and sentence.

FACTS

I. Background

One night in June 2018, a friend let Olson and Careaga take his 2007 Audi A4 for a drive to celebrate their 10-month anniversary. Olson was 18 years old. Initially, Careaga drove, and at Olson's request, he then let her drive.

Olson was driving on a straight portion of Hansville Road in Kitsap County. The intersection of Hansville Road and Little Boston Road had a flashing yellow light to alert traffic on Hansville Road that there was an intersection. The speed limit on this stretch of Hansville Road was 45 miles per hour.

Sapp was driving on Hansville Road in the opposite direction as Olson and Careaga. Sapp was in the middle of turning left onto Little Boston Road when the Audi struck his car. At the time of impact, Sapp's car was traveling 9 or 10 miles per hour. The Audi braked before the collision, leaving a skid mark that was 170 feet long. The Audi was traveling roughly 104 miles per hour at impact.

Sapp's car was pushed 150 feet backward and landed on its roof with Sapp partially ejected through the windshield. He was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center. He underwent multiple surgeries and has permanent health problems as a result of the collision. He also lost his job and experienced homelessness after the accident.

The Audi also landed upside down in a ditch on the other side of Hansville Road and caught fire. Witnesses pulled Olson from the driver's side of the vehicle. She had several broken bones.

Careaga died almost instantly from injuries to his heart. The car burned with Careaga's body inside.

II. Pretrial

The State charged Olson with vehicular homicide of Careaga and vehicular assault of Sapp. The State later amended the charges to add an aggravating factor that Sapp's injuries substantially exceeded those necessary to constitute vehicular assault. The charge for vehicular homicide in both documents read, "On or about June 19, 2018 . . . [Olson] did drive or operate a motor vehicle in a reckless manner, and did thereby proximately cause the death of another person within three (3) years of such motor vehicle operation." Clerk's Papers (CP) at 1, 16 (emphasis added). Neither the original nor the amended information included language that Olson's reckless driving proximately caused an injury that proximately caused a person's death. But attached to both documents was a statement of probable cause that included the sentence: "Joseph Careaga died on scene as a result of injuries sustained from the collision." CP at 4, 19.

During motions in limine, the State moved to exclude any evidence or jury instruction that "Sapp's driving was a superseding, intervening cause of the collision." Suppl. Clerk's Papers (SCP) at 365, 368. The superseding intervening cause instruction was never formally submitted to the trial court, but the pattern instruction provides, in part,

If you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the [[act] [or] [omission]] [driving] of the defendant was a proximate cause of [the death] [substantial bodily harm to another], it is not a defense that the [conduct] [driving] of [the deceased] [or] [another] may also have been a proximate cause of the [death] [substantial bodily harm] .

[However, if a proximate cause of [the death] [substantial bodily harm] was a new independent intervening act of [the deceased] [the injured person] [or] [another] which the defendant, in the exercise of ordinary care, should not reasonably have anticipated as likely to happen, the defendant's act is superseded by the intervening cause and is not a proximate cause of the [death] [substantial bodily harm]. An intervening cause is an action that actively operates to produce harm to another after the defendant's [act] [or] [omission] has been committed [or begun].]

[However, if in the exercise of ordinary care, the defendant should reasonably have anticipated the intervening cause, that cause does not supersede the defendant's original act and the defendant's act is a proximate cause. It is not necessary that the sequence of events or the particular injury be foreseeable. It is only necessary that the [death] [substantial bodily harm] fall within the general field of danger which the defendant should have reasonably anticipated.]

11A Washington Practice: Washington Pattern Jury Instructions: Criminal 90.08 (5th ed. 2021) (WPIC) (emphasis added).^[1]

The State argued that superseding intervening cause evidence and corresponding jury instruction should be precluded when a defendant's "conduct is the direct and unbroken cause of the harm suffered by the victims." SCP at 370. The State argued that even if Sapp had failed to yield properly before beginning his left turn, that would not have been a superseding intervening cause because the criminal nature of Olson's behavior did not change as a result of Sapp's action and Olson's conduct was still a proximate cause of Sapp and Careaga's injuries. Olson countered that "the jury could very easily find that [Sapp]... pulling directly in front of Ms. Olson without [signaling]" was a superseding cause because "[i]f he hadn't pulled in front of her, in a sense, we wouldn't be here." Verbatim Report of Proceedings (VRP) (Feb. 13, 2020) at 98.

The trial court explained that if "it was reasonably foreseeable that somebody could cross" a speeding defendant's path, that would be a concurrent, as opposed to intervening, cause. Id. at 103. The trial court ruled that it would wait to hear the evidence presented at trial before ruling on any jury instruction regarding Sapp's driving as a superseding intervening cause. Neither the parties nor the trial court discussed a mechanical failure as a possible cause of the collision at this stage.

III. Trial

At trial, the State presented testimony from several people who saw the collision or stopped to help, six firefighters, nine law enforcement officers, airlifting flight nurse, three doctors who treated Sapp at Harborview, Sapp himself, and the forensic pathologist who performed Careaga's autopsy. A central piece of evidence admitted and referenced throughout the trial was a security camera video that showed Sapp's vehicle approaching the intersection and beginning to turn before being struck by the Audi, which was traveling at a high rate of speed and appeared to have brake lights activated.

Several of the police officers testified as experts in collision reconstruction, including Deputy Andrew Aman. The officers testified that before the impact, the Audi left a skid mark from braking that was approximately 170 feet long. Skid marks are caused by friction from the tires heating up oils on the road. The skid marks at the scene darkened as they approached the point of impact, which indicated that they were from braking, whereas marks from acceleration would have started off darker and grown lighter as they progressed. Aman explained calculations that showed that the Audi was traveling at approximately 120 miles per hour before Olson began braking at the start of the skid marks. The Audi's brake system was too damaged from the fire to analyze it for mechanical issues.

Aman testified that Sapp was not cited for a failure to yield. He also explained that if Olson had been driving 55 miles per hour before she began braking, there would have been no collision because Sapp would have had "more than enough time" to complete his turn safely. VRP (Nov. 16, 2020) at 1182.

Olson testified at trial. She was "very confident" that she had been driving 50 miles per hour or less before the collision, in part because she delivered packages for work and therefore spent a lot of time driving. VRP (Nov. 18, 2020) at 1251. She remembered the speedometer reading 47 miles per hour. She testified that when she saw Sapp turn in front of her she stepped on the brakes, at which point the Audi "took off," and accelerated instead of braking. Id. at 1253.

When asked what medications she was prescribed for her injuries, Olson listed several painkillers. Defense counsel then asked if Olson was prescribed any other medication, and the State objected to Olson's answer:

[OLSON]: They put me on a lot of medications. I later did go to a therapist, and I was put on antidepressants [post-traumatic stress disorder]

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