Court Opinion

ID: 9524992
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:59:00.492496+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:12:29.644753
License: Public Domain

*103WILLIAM G. CALLOW, J.
(dissenting). The issue in this case presents a problem of first impression for this court and therefore requires that we adopt one of several alternative positions. The majority concludes that committing homicide by reckless conduct does not disqualify the killer from inheriting from the victim. I respectfully dissent because I believe that crimes against life are so offensive to society that public policy dictates that no inheritance should flow from the victim to the killer, except perhaps in those cases where the victim’s death resulted from a negligently homicidal act of the offender under secs. 940.07, 940.08, or 940.09, Stats. I recognize a great distinction between gross negligence and negligence, and I believe this court and the legislature over the years have accorded gross negligence a meaning embracing the elements of subjective intent, subjective realization, and willful conduct. Therefore, the character of Bernard Safran’s crime — a violation of sec. 940.06, Stats., 1975, a crime encompassing all of the elements of gross negligence in the criminal law of Wisconsin — disqualifies him from inheriting under the common law of this state which prohibits inheritance by one who kills the testator.
I conclude the majority draws the distinction between the statutes dealing with homicide in the wrong place. The acts prohibited by secs. 940.01 through 940.06, Stats., generally recognize and require the existence of a mental state evincing an intentional disregard for human life. Only the acts prohibited by secs. 940.07 through 940.09, Stats., speak to negligent conduct. In Hart v. State, 75 Wis.2d 371, 249 N.W.2d 810 (1977), our most recent pronouncement on the subject, this court said:
“Gross negligence (which is now incorporated in sec. 940.06, Stats., Homicide by Reckless Conduct) requires a subjective intent as an element of the offense. In *104Bussard and Clemens, the court used the following definition of gross negligence from Jorgenson v. Chicago & N.W. Ry., 153 Wis. 108, 116, 140 N.W. 1088 (1913) :
“ ‘. . . Gross negligence has received a very certain and definite meaning in the jurisprudence of this state . . . . It is not inadvertence in any degree; there must be present either wilful intent to injure or that wanton and reckless disregard of the rights of others and the consequences of the act to himself as well as to others which the law deems equivalent to an intent to inj ure.’ ” Id. at 380.
The majority now withdraws the language of Hart v. State which determined that reckless homicide “requires a subjective intent as an element of the offense.” The court does not withdraw the language of Hart which states gross negligence requires some subjective realization on the part of the defendant. The majority notes that under the Uniform Probate Code, adopted by thirteen states, one will not inherit if he feloniously and intentionally kills the decedent, but this prohibition excludes accidental manslaughter. There is nothing about accidental conduct in 940.06, Stats., 1975. Professor John Wade in his model statute, Acquisition of Property by Wilfully Killing Another — A Statutory Solution, 49 Harv. L. Rev. 715 (1936), disqualifies a “slayer” and defines a slayer as “[a]ny person who wilfully and unlawfully takes or procures to be taken the life of another.” Id. at 721-22. That is precisely the conduct I believe sec. 940.06 prohibits.
Jorgenson v. Chicago & N.W. Ry. Co., 153 Wis. 108, 116, 140 N.W. 1088 (1913), speaks of gross negligence as something different from a high degree of negligence and identifies that difference by defining gross negligence in terms of “wilful intent” and “wanton and reckless disregard of the rights of others.” In sec. 940.06, Stats., the legislature specifically defines reckless con*105duct as an act which creates a situation of unreasonable risk and high probability of death or great bodily harm to another and went on to state that it intended the definition to embrace all of the elements of what was heretofore known as gross negligence in the criminal law of Wisconsin. While the original determination of what constituted gross negligence was set forth in a civil case, this court said in Bussard v. State, 233 Wis. 11, 13, 288 N.W. 187 (1939), a criminal case, “we must assume that the legislature, in adopting the amendment of 1929, used the term ‘gross negligence’ in that sense.” That “sense” refers to the Jorgenson case definition of gross negligence.
I believe the majority in its effort to find a solution to the peculiar problem presented here does serious damage to the legislative commands of the unambiguous language of sec. 940.06, Stats., when it withdraws the language of Hárt defining gross negligence as requiring subjective intent. After disavowing the definition of gross negligence in Hart, the majority elects to adopt the language of Hayzes v. State, 64 Wis.2d 189, 198, 218 N.W.2d 717 (1974), identifying this violation of sec. 940.06 as a degree of negligent homicide and declaring that the gross negligence requirement of sec. 940.06 is met “where the death was caused without the intent to commit bodily harm, but the conduct of the actor was such that there was a high probability that someone would be killed or injured.” This treatment of gross negligence seems to return to the culpable negligence rule which this court found objectionable in the Bussard case — objectionable to the point that it suggested (and the legislature obliged) the legislature adopt the gross negligence standard which the majority now abandons.
Since negligence is a stated element of secs. 940.07, 940.08, and 940.09, Stats., I would separate them from *106the more serious crimes prohibited by secs. 940.01 through 940.06, Stats. These more serious crimes bear the element of intent or subjective intent or subjective realization that a result will occur which will cause death or a high probability of death.
The trial court and the majority correctly observed that Wisconsin has no statute on' disqualification by reason of manslaughter or negligent homicide. This court, in a line of cases cited by the majority, has reiterated its firm commitment to the principle that a murderer or slayer will not be permitted to profit by his crime. Because I equate homicide by reckless conduct with conduct involving intent rather than negligence, I would include homicide by reckless conduct with those acts that disqualify a person from profiting or inheriting as a result of his crime.
I therefore conclude that this crime, under the common law of Wisconsin, disqualifies Bernard Safran, Jr., from inheriting the property of his mother — his victim. The public policy principle that no one should be permitted to profit by his own wrong has been said to be as old as equity itself. It has survived through the years because it is a just policy that can be expected to produce a just result.
The second question to be resolved is whether a judgment of conviction following a plea of no contest is admissible in the probate proceeding to conclusively prove disqualification.
The majority notes, citing Will of Wilson, 5 Wis.2d 178, 92 N.W.2d 282 (1958), that this court implicitly recognized an exception to the exclusionary rule regarding admissibility in the probate court where a judgment of conviction in the criminal court represents each of the elements of the disqualification test — that one intentionally and unlawfully killed the testator. I believe we are *107here confronted with the same proposition. Is the question to be answered in the probate court the same as that answered in the criminal court? My reasoning that Bernard Safran’s conviction of violating sec. 940.06, Stats., 1975, disqualified him from inheriting under the common law of Wisconsin brings me to the inescapable conclusion that, as in Will of Wilson, the criminal court has answered the question which controls the result in the probate court, and therefore the judgment of conviction is admissible under the exception to the exclusionary rule.
Because I find Bernard Safran disqualified from inheriting, it is necessary to note that I agree with the majority in its conclusion concerning the ultimate disposition of the estate upon Bernard Safran’s disqualification. The majority notes the interests of children neither born nor conceived as being too remote. I would add that the interests of any child adopted by Bernard Safran subsequent to the killing would also be too remote.
I am authorized to state that Justice John L. Coffey joins in this dissenting opinion.