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People v. Kulpinski10/17/2000
th statute is not a codification of common law. Id. at 246. The Court reasoned that the statute is designed to deter motorists from driving after they have become intoxicated; the culpable act the Legislature intended to prevent is the one in which a person becomes intoxicated and then decides to drive. By contrast, the common law, as articulated in People v.Townsend, 214 Mich 267, 273; 183 NW 177 (1921), focuses not merely on the evil of intoxicated driving, but also the vice of voluntary intoxication in and of itself. Lardie, supra, 452 Mich at 245. Additionally, the Court noted that unlike the common law, the OUIL causing death statute mandates a threshold blood alcohol content, and the Legislature created its own statutory penalty for a violation of the statute. Id. at 246. The Lardie Court surmised that in so doing, the Legislature declined to adopt the manslaughter penalty now codified in MCL 750.321; MSA 28.553, and "would likely have referred to the manslaughter statute for the penalty for the crime if it wished to codify the crime from the common law." Id. Significantly, the Lardie Court stated that the OUIL causing death statute does not limit the ability of the prosecution to charge an intoxicated driver with involuntary manslaughter, negligent homicide, or even murder if warranted by the facts. Id. at 247, n 23. Thus, we disagree with the present defendant's assessment that " n many ways, OUIL causing death codifies the common law charge of involuntary manslaughter with a motor vehicle while voluntarily intoxicated."
The Lardie decision also firmly established and clarified the causation element of the crime of OUIL causing death, thereby further distinguishing it from the crime of involuntary manslaughter. Our Supreme Court explained, id. at 258, that " n proving causation, the people must establish that the particular defendant's decision to drive while intoxicated produced a change in that driver's operation of the vehicle that caused the death of the victim." The Court emphasized the significance of this requirement in several footnotes:
46. The concurrence suggests that the statute unambiguously provides that a driver is guilty of this crime when his mere operation of the vehicle is the cause in fact of the victim's death regardless of whether his intoxication played a causal role. . . . Contrary to the concurrence's suggestion, the statute may easily support the interpretation that the driver's intoxication, rather than the mere operation of the vehicle, must be the cause of the victim's death.
47. It is the change that such intoxication produces, and whether it caused the death, which is the focus of this element of the crime. The concurrence argues that this conclusion "rewards" the careless or unsafe driver because the people will have a more difficult time proving causation against such a driver. . . . This is misleading. Under this particular statute, the Legislature punishes drivers when their drunken driving causes the death of another. However, the people may also charge a defendant with involuntary manslaughter, at the same time in charging this crime, if there is a serious question about whether the driver's careless or unsafe driving, somehow unrelated to his intoxication, was the cause of the victim's death.
48. . . . The concurrence claims that the victim's death is "always avoidable" because the driver could have decided not to drive at all. . . . However, this interpretation eliminates any substantial connection between the fault and the resulting death. The Legislature seeks to prohibit intoxicated driving because of the danger that such driving poses to the safety of the community. The concurrence would allow the statute to impose this f
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