Opinion ID: 1700534
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: PEOPLE v TIMS

Text: On July 9, 1989, at approximately 8:30 P.M., Greg Amman was killed when the defendant's vehicle struck him. The facts were vigorously contested at trial. Shortly before the accident, the defendant and Bobby Osborne had engaged in a drag race on Jennings Road, between Pierson and Pasadena Roads, in Mt. Morris Township. Various lay witnesses estimated that the vehicles were traveling at speeds between seventy and ninety miles an hour, however, one witness testified that the codefendant's vehicle stopped about a quarter of a mile before the scene of the accident. A police officer testified that the words Finish had been marked in white paint on Jennings Road approximately 1,578 feet before the point of impact. The officer further testified that the road dipped down and then back up, with the highest point in the road being the point of impact. The victim ran onto Jennings Road to retrieve a whiffle ball, into the path of the defendant. The victim's view of the defendant's vehicle was blocked by another vehicle. Likewise, the defendant's view of the victim was blocked by the same vehicle. The defendant attempted to avoid the victim, but failed. An accident reconstruction expert testified that skid marks indicated that the defendant was, at a minimum, traveling between thirty-nine and forty-three miles an hour at the beginning of the skid. [2] The expert's conclusion was based in part on his finding that the victim's body slid twenty-seven feet from the point of impact to its final resting place. The expert testified that in accident reconstruction, the procedure is to work backward from the information that is collected at the scene. Therefore, he concluded that in order for a human body to slide twenty-seven feet on the then-current road conditions, the defendant's vehicle would have been traveling at a minimum speed of twenty-two miles an hour. [3] The posted speed limit was forty-five miles an hour. At the time of his death, the victim had a blood alcohol level of 0.09 percent. The defendant was charged with second-degree murder. The prosecution's theory was that the codefendants had intentionally engaged in a drag race, exhibiting a wanton disregard that a death or great bodily harm would occur, and that the drag race caused the death. The defense theory was that the race had ended before the impact with the victim, that the accident was unavoidable, and that the victim's own negligence led to his death. After a four-day jury trial, the trial court instructed the jury regarding the causation element of each of the degrees of homicide as follows: Each of these degrees of homicide require a finding... that the conduct of Mr. Tims was a substantial cause of the fatal accident. The defendant had objected to the instruction, arguing that it was necessary for the jury to find that the defendant's conduct was the substantial cause of the accident. The defendant was convicted of the lesser-included offense of negligent homicide, [4] and was sentenced to sixteen to twenty-four months imprisonment. The defendant appealed as of right to the Court of Appeals. The panel felt constrained to follow People v Layman, 299 Mich 141, 145; 299 NW 840 (1941), People v Townsend, 214 Mich 267, 275; 183 NW 177 (1921), and People v Barnes, 182 Mich 179, 199; 148 NW 400 (1914), stating that this Court's holdings in those cases required that the defendant's conduct be the proximate cause of the victim's death. [5] The panel reversed and remanded for a new trial, stating that the trial court erred in instructing the jury that the defendant's conduct must be a rather than the substantial cause of the victim's death. We granted the prosecution's application for leave to appeal. [6]