 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to DUI Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
NOLEN v. STATE12/13/1982
S.W.2d 625 (1949), where we said:
Whether particular conduct is cautious or reckless depends upon its attendant circumstances. To drive a car at sixty miles an hour may demonstrate extreme caution upon a race-track and yet may be almost as culpable as murder if done in a crowded city street. Here petitioner is charged with driving recklessly, willfully and wantonly in such circumstances that three people were killed. It is stated that he was under the influence of intoxicants at the time. On the basis of these allegations we must treat petitioner's conduct as being equivalent to a conscious and deliberate disregard for the safety of others. Such behavior borders so closely upon that motivated by actual intent that we have no hesitancy in saying that the same reasoning is applicable. Petitioner risked a violation of the statute as to each person whose life he imperiled and may be held separately responsible for each death proximately resulting from the prohibited conduct.
Here, there was evidence that appellant was driving at a high rate of speed on the wrong side of the road in an intoxicated condition when he collided head on with another vehicle, killing one person and seriously injuring another. The vehicle he struck traveled backward 65 feet from the point of impact and his vehicle continued forward 49 feet. The evidence, when viewed most favorably to the appellee, as we must do on appeal, is amply substantial to support the jury's finding that the appellant caused serious physical injury to another person under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life.
Affirmed.
HICKMAN and PURTLE, JJ., dissent.
DARRELL HICKMAN, Justice, dissenting. I dissent for two reasons. First, to preserve my protest to the unconstitutionality of the offense titled first degree battery. See Martin v. State, 261 Ark. 80, 547 S.W.2d 81 (1977). Second, I dissent to point out that the prior convictions for DWI cannot be admitted "on cross-examination" pursuant to Ark. Stat. Ann. 28-1001, Rule 404 (b) (Repl. 1979). That rule, if available at all, means such evidence is admissible in the State's case in chief. I agreed in Vowell it was admissible only because Vowell testified that the vehicular collision was an accident, and for no other reason. See Vowell v. State, 276 Ark. 258, 634 S.W.2d 118 (1982).
PURTLE, J., joins in this dissent.
|