Court Opinion

ID: 9851167
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:08:26.166355+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:50.401850
License: Public Domain

PETITION FOR REHEARING
STEWART, Justice:
The State has filed a petition for rehearing in this matter in which it earnestly and vigorously contends that the Court erred in its disposition of the case because of our failure to take into account the effect of State v. Berchtold, 11 Utah 2d 208, 357 P.2d 183 (1960) in ruling that the manslaughter statute and the motor vehicle code impose different penalties for the same criminal conduct. The State urges that the term “recklessness” as defined in the criminal code, U.C.A., 1953, § 76-2-103(3) (1978) does not mean the same as the term “reckless disregard of the safety of others” which is in § 41-6-43.10(a) of the motor vehicle code.
Under the criminal code, a defendant, to have acted with “recklessness,” must be consciously, and therefore subjectively, aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk of causing a death. See § 76-2-103(3). Under Berchtold, the Court held that the term “reckless disregard” under the motor vehicle code permitted a conviction if a “ ‘defendant consciously chose a course of action knowing that such course would place his guests in grave and serious danger or with knowledge of facts which would disclose such danger to any reasonable person.’ ” 11 Utah 2d at 214-15. In other words, under this standard a defendant could be found guilty if the defendant was subjectively conscious, or objectively should have been conscious, of a grave and serious risk that he had created.
The Court in Berchtold also stated that the motor vehicle statute did not “require an intentional accident nor the choosing of a highly dangerous course while fully conscious or aware of the danger confronting him in choosing such course. [However] [i]t does require the choosing of a course with grave and marked dangers, and the driver must be conscious and aware of the course he chooses, and such course must be so fraught with danger that all reasonable persons if they thought about it could not fail to recognize the danger.” In all events, the statute required a “much great*265er lack of care than ordinary negligence _” Id. at 215.1
The State argues that the Berchtold definition of “reckless disregard” would permit a conviction under the motor vehicle statute for action which a defendant “knew” or “should have known” was highly dangerous to others. Although that is true, it does not change the results required in this case. Under the manslaughter statute, the defendant must have actually known of the risks; simply disregarding risks which he should have been aware of is not sufficient to sustain a conviction under that provision. But he could also have been convicted under the motor vehicle statute if he actually knew of the risks, as the jury in this case found. It is irrelevant that the defendant could not have been convicted of risks about which he should have known, but did not. Accordingly, the premise of the Court's main opinion that the defendant could have been convicted under either the manslaughter statute or the motor vehicle code for precisely the same act, but with different punishments, is wholly valid.
For the foregoing reasons, the petition for rehearing is denied.
HALL, C.J., HOWE and DURHAM, JJ., and GEORGE E. BALLIF, District Judge, concur.
ZIMMERMAN, J., does not participate herein.

. Section 76-2-103(3) (1978) defines conduct that is performed recklessly:
[W]hen he is aware of but consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the circumstances exist or the result will occur. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that its disregard constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that an ordinary person would exercise under all the circumstances as viewed from the actor’s standpoint.
This test is congruent with the test in Berchtold as to the nature of the risk. Berchtold did not establish a criminal negligence test in place of recklessness.