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Davis v. State7/28/2000
JO-049C
In the early morning hours of September 1, 1996, a van driven by sixteen-year-old Charles Davis, Jr. left the roadway and collided head-on with a tree. As a result of the collision, a fire started in the van. Spilled painting supplies in the back of the van caused the fire to spread rapidly throughout the vehicle. Davis survived the crash, but Amanda Farmer and Carrie Clowes, two passengers, died as a result of injuries they received when the van struck the tree. It was not possible to remove two other passengers, Davis' sister and Tennyson Clark, from the van. They died from smoke inhalation and/or burns from the fire.
Among other offenses, Davis was charged with four counts of first degree vehicular homicide. A jury found him guilty of first degree vehicular homicide by reckless driving in the deaths of Farmer and Clowes, and guilty of second degree vehicular homicide in the deaths of his sister and Clark. He was also convicted of driving without a license and driving with a suspended license.
Davis appeals, claiming that the verdicts are mutually exclusive, that confidential psychiatric records were erroneously admitted into evidence at his trial, that the court improperly failed to charge the jury on proximate cause, and that the state's closing argument was improper. We find these arguments to be without merit, and thus affirm Davis' convictions.
1.
Davis contends the verdicts finding him guilty of first degree vehicular homicide in the deaths of Farmer and Clowes are mutually exclusive of the verdicts finding him guilty of second degree vehicular homicide in the deaths of his sister and Clark. According to Davis, the verdicts are mutually exclusive because by finding second degree vehicular homicide, the jury must have found that he did not drive recklessly, thereby excluding his conviction for first degree vehicular homicide. Although the verdicts may be inconsistent, they are not mutually exclusive.
The statutory definition of second degree vehicular homicide is as follows:
Any person who causes the death of another person, without an intention to do so, by violating any provision of this title other than subsection (a) of Code Section 40-6-163 or subsection (b) of Code Section 40-6-270 or Code Section 40-6-390 or 40-6- 391 or subsection (a) of Code Section 40-6-395 commits the offense of homicide by vehicle in the second degree when such violation is the cause of said death . . . (emphasis added)
Given this definition, a finding of second degree vehicular homicide does not mandate a conclusion that a driver did not drive in a reckless manner. A jury could believe that although the driver was reckless, that reckless driving did not cause the particular death. Instead, a jury might conclude that some other traffic offense caused a particular victim's death.
It is undisputed that Davis' sister and Clark died as a result of the fire, not directly because of the impact. The evidence shows that in all likelihood these two victims would have survived the results of Davis' reckless driving had there been no fire. The verdicts suggest that the jury wanted to find some lesser degree of culpability for these two deaths, and they did this in the only way presented to them: they found that some other traffic offense caused the deaths. In fact, Davis' attorneys argued during the course of the trial that some traffic offense other than reckless driving caused all four of the victims' deaths. While we cannot know the basis for the jury's decision, we cannot say that the verdicts are mutually exclusive because there is sufficient evidence that another traffic offense occurred (such as speedin
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