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Klaub v. State3/29/2002
WHOLE COURT
Ronald Klaub was convicted by a jury of two counts of vehicular homicide, hit and run, and driving with a suspended license. He appeals his convictions, raising several arguments, including that the trial court erred by 1) failing to grant a directed verdict of acquittal as to the charge of homicide by vehicle through the commission of reckless driving; 2) failing to grant a directed verdict of acquittal as to the charge of homicide by vehicle through the violation of OCGA § 40-6-270, the hit and run statute; and 3) failing to strike a juror for cause. We reverse Klaub's conviction for vehicular homicide through the commission of reckless driving. We affirm the remainder of the judgment.
Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence presented at trial showed that on the night of December 9, 1998, between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m., Klaub told his wife, Charlene Ward, that he was going out and taking her car, a 1986 Mercury Topaz. When he returned around 11:00 p.m., Klaub informed Ward that he had hit a dog and damaged her car. Ward went to the garage and saw that the headlight had been broken and that the windshield was cracked.
On the morning of December 10, 1998, the body of Joeann Edwards Swift was found lying face down in some leaves just off the roadway near the intersection of Moreland Drive and Hazelrig Drive. The night before, she had walked to a pay phone to call her son in New York; that conversation was the last she had with anyone. The victim's body was surrounded by automobile pieces; some of these pieces, found in the victim's clothing and examined by the crime lab, were identified as coming from Klaub's wife's car. On the basis of an autopsy, it was surmised that the victim probably died between 12:45 a.m. and 6:45 a.m. on December 10th, though the time of death could have been earlier. The victim's injuries were typical of those of a person who has hit a windshield. The cause of death was injury to the brain, and because there was very little swelling of the brain, it was estimated that the victim had died within minutes of being struck. There were no witnesses to the accident.
On December 20, 1998, Officer Britman of the Atlanta Police Department met with a black female whom he had never met. The woman, who would not give her real name and who was accompanied by a co-worker from the Home Depot across the street from the Zone 2 precinct office, told Britman that she knew who had driven the car that struck the victim on Moreland Drive, that the driver's name was Ron, and that the car had front-end damage and a broken windshield. She said that she had gotten her information from Ron's wife, Cathy, a co-worker with whom she had been drinking and smoking marijuana in a shed behind Ron's house the day before. Based on the informant's description, Britman located the house; he did a computer check on the address but found that the house belonged to a Florence Lange.
On December 23, 1998, Britman received a call from Officer Stephens of the Clayton County Police. Stephens told him that he had spoken to one of his informants, a black female, who had told him that a man named Ronald Klaub had been the driver of the vehicle which killed the victim. Britman and Stephens, along with some other officers, went to the Klaub's house, where they introduced themselves to Klaub's mother, Mrs. Lange, and asked for Klaub. Informed that Klaub was not at home, the officers were then invited in by Lange and told that they could search the house. In the garage they found a 1986 Mercury Topaz with a cracked windshield and broken headlight. When asked about the damage to the car, Lange said that Klaub had told her that he had hit a dog, and t
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