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North Carolina v. McGill11/5/1985
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 the 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; 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. Ce
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