State v. Reis

• Decision Date: 29 May 1970
• Docket Number: No. 923-E,923-E
• Citation: 107 R.I. 188,265 A.2d 651
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. Manuel REIS, Jr. x. &c.

Page 651

265 A.2d 651

107 R.I. 188

STATE v. Manuel REIS, Jr.

No. 923-Ex. &c.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

May 29, 1970.

Herbert F. DeSimone, Atty. Gen., Donald P. Ryan, Asst. Atty. Gen., for plaintiff

George C. Berk, Providence, for defendant.

OPINION

KELLEHER, Justice.

This is a criminal complaint which charges the defendant with operating a motor vehicle at an unreasonable rate of speed. After a trial in the district court, the defendant was found guilty. He received a fine of $50 plus costs and was sentenced to 15 days in jail. Sentence was suspended, and the defendant was placed on probation for one year. He took an appeal to the Superior Court. Before the commencement of trial in that court, he moved to dismiss the complaint on the ground that the charge contained therein was vague and indefinite, and therefore in violation of art. I, sec. 10, of the Rhode Island constitution. The trial justice granted the defendant's motion, and the state appealed his action to this court. The case is before us on the state's bill of exceptions pursuant to the provisions of G.L. 1956 (1969 Reenactment) § 9-24-32. ¹ The state's bill contains two exceptions-first to the court's denial of its motion to amend the complaint, and second to the granting of defendant's motion to dismiss. We shall discuss only the latter exception.

The complaint charged that defendant on January 12, 1969:

'Did operate a motor vehicle on Douglas Ave. a highway in the City of Providence at a speed greater than was reasonable and prudent under the conditions and having regard to the hazards then existing to wit: at a speed in excess of 25 miles per hour in a Residential district in violation of Title 31, Chapter 14, Sections 1 & 2, of the General Laws of the State of Rhode Island.'

In granting defendant's motion to dismiss, the trial judge remarked that the complaint was defective in that it failed to specify the speed defendant was traveling at the time of the alleged offense. The trial justice attributed his belief that a complaint charging a driver with operating a motor vehicle at an unreasonable rate of speed had to specify the vehicle's rate of speed to our holding in State v. Campbell, 97 R.I. 111, 196 A.2d 131. The trial justice has misconceived the holding in that case. As will be seen, the prosecution is not required to set forth in a criminal case the rate of speed a motorist was traveling at the time he was observed violating the so-called speeding provisions of the Motor Vehicle Code. The trial court's dismissal of the instant complaint was erroneous.

State v. Campbell, supra, and State v. Brown, 97 R.I. 115, 196 A.2d 133, were both published on December 18, 1963. In each case, the defendant motorist was charged with violating the provisions of § 31-14-1. ² In essence, this section states that a motor vehicle shall not be operated '* * * at a speed greater than is reasonable and prudent under the conditions and having regard to the actual and potential hazards then existing.' We pointed out that a complaint which charges an offense solely in the language of § 31-14-1 does not satisfy the constitutional test of certainty. Such a complaint, we said, was so lacking in definition that a person of ordinary intelligence could not know at what speed he could drive and still be within the law. Accordingly, we held that the complaints in Campbell and Brown were constitutionally defective.

In State v. Brown, supra, the present Chief Justice in reviewing the legislative history of the Motor Vehicle Code Act showed that when the code was originally adopted in 1950, §§ 31-14-1, 31-14-2, and 31-14-3 constituted sec. 1 of art. XXV of the code. The Chief Justice pointed out in Brown that when the General Laws were compiled in 1956, art. XXV, sec. 1, was fragmented into three separate but consecutive sections. With this background information, it became obvious that the legislature intended that §§ 31-14-1, 31-14-2, and 31-14-3 were to be considered as a single statutory enactment that, in its entirety, tells a motorist when his speed is within or in excess of the permissible limits established by the Motor Vehicle Code.

Section 31-14-1 forbids the operation of a motor vehicle at an unreasonable rate of speed. Section 31-14-2 specifies certain rates of speed which shall be lawful when no special hazard exists but also provides that any speed in excess of such limits shall be prima facie evidence of an unlawful rate requiring the motorist to come forward with evidence designed to show that his speed was reasonable. In § 31-14-3, the legislature has declared that a motorist should appropriately reduce his speed when encountering one of the hazards enumerated therein. Having in mind the totality of these three sections, any motorist who drives in excess of the speed limit or who fails to reduce his speed in an appropriate situation may be found to have operated his motor vehicle at an unreasonable rate of speed. Such unreasonableness constitutes a misdemeanor. See § 31-12-2.

The defect found in the Campbell and the Brown complaints was that each complaint described the defendant's conduct solely in the language of § 31-14-1. Such language stood alone without any reference to the standards contained in § 31-14-2 or § 31-14-3. If each complaint had alleged that the defendant had driven at an excess of the different speed limits described in § 31-14-2, the complaints would have withstood the constitutional attack made on them.

The instant complaint, however, contains the language that was missing in the complaints filed in Campbell and Brown. It states that defendant was driving '* * * at a speed in excess of 25 miles per hour in a Residential district * * *.' Section 31-14-2 establishes as a reasonable speed for automotive traffic in a residential district a speed up to 25 miles an hour. Any defendant being served with a complaint, as the one presently before us, is informed that he has exceeded the speed limit and what that limit is. It matters not whether he has exceeded the limit by one or twenty miles per hour. Once a motorist has exceeded the limits contained in § 31-14-2, he comes within the section's provision that any speed in excess of such limits shall be prima facie evidence of unreasonable speed. The amount by which the defendant has exceeded the speed limit may be...