Court Opinion

ID: 9531737
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:14:15.199299+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:34.458568
License: Public Domain

SINGLETON, Judge,
with whom BRYNER, Chief Judge, joins concurring.
Richard Pears argues that as a matter of statutory construction vehicular homicide cannot equal second-degree murder regardless of the facts. AS 11.41.110(a)(2). He separately argues that the evidence presented during his trial was insufficient to support a conviction of second-degree murder and that the court erred in denying his motion for judgment of acquittal. The court rejects both of these arguments. I agree with that result, first, because I am convinced that there are certain limited circumstances under which vehicular homicide can constitute second-degree murder and, second, because I am convinced that this is one of those rare cases. I believe it is important to stress, however, that a prima facie case for manslaughter is not automatically a prima facie case for second-degree murder. A trial judge faced with a prosecution for vehicular homicide must carefully evaluate the prosecution’s case-in-ehief in deciding whether to permit a jury to deliberate on the issue of second-degree murder.
An automobile clearly constitutes a “dangerous instrument” as that term is defined in the Revised Code. “ ‘Dangerous instrument’ means anything which, under the circumstances in which it is used, attempted to be used, or threatened to be used, is capable of causing death or serious physical injury.” AS 11.81.900(b)(ll). Certainly an intoxicated person in control of a dangerous instrument in a place where others are present creates a substantial and unjustifiable risk that death or serious injury will occur, see AS 11.81.900(a)(3) (defining recklessly). A person commits the crime of manslaughter if he recklessly causes the death of another person under circumstances not amounting to murder in the first or second degree. AS 11.41.120(a)(1). Consequently, a prosecutor showing that an intoxicated person drove a car and caused a death probably makes a prima facie case of manslaughter as defined in AS 11.41.120(a).
Before recklessness can meet the test of second-degree murder, however, it must “manifest an extreme indifference to the value of human life.” As we noted in Neitzel v. State, 655 P.2d 325, 335-38 (Alaska App.1982), murder, which is defined based upon the Model Penal Code, requires a finding of recklessness virtually amounting to purpose or knowledge:
In a prosecution for murder, however, the Code calls for the further judgment whether the actor’s conscious disregard of the risk, under the circumstances, manifests extreme indifference to the value of *913human life. The significance of purpose or knowledge as a standard of culpability is that, cases of provocation or other mitigation apart, purposeful or knowing homicide demonstrates precisely such indifference to the value of human life. Whether recklessness is so extreme that it demonstrates similar indifference is not a question, it is submitted, that can be further clarified. It must be left directly to the trier of fact under instructions which make it clear that recklessness that can fairly be assimilated to purpose or knowledge should be treated as murder and that less extreme recklessness should be punished as manslaughter.
655 P.2d at 335-36, quoting A.L.I., Model Penal Code and Commentaries, Part II, § 210.2, at 21-23 (1980) (footnote omitted).
In determining whether recklessness approaches purpose or knowledge we must bear in mind the common law distinction drawn between intent and motive. Intent is the immediate object of the defendant’s act while his motives are the underlying reasons for his act, the benefits he hopes to obtain or detriments he hopes to avoid. The common law has always included within the results intended by a defendant those results which will necessarily follow from his act even if he has no motive to achieve them. For example, if a man insures his wife knowing that she will take an airplane trip and then plants a bomb in her suitcase intending to explode the airplane and cause her death, he is held to have intended the death of the other passengers on the airplane even though he was “indifferent” to their welfare because their deaths were necessary side effects of his intended action, the destruction of the airplane in flight. See W. LaFave & A. Scott, Criminal Law § 28, at 196 (1972), where the authors state:
With crimes which require that the defendant intentionally cause a specific result, what is meant by an “intention” to cause that result? Although the theorists have not always been in agreement as to the answer to this question, it is now generally accepted that a person who acts (or omits to act) intends a result of his act (or omission) under two quite different circumstances: (1) when he consciously desires that result, whatever the likelihood of that result happening from his conduct; and (2) when he knows that the result is practically certain to follow from his conduct, whatever his desire may be as to that result, [footnotes omitted]
Sometimes the common law called the first mental state “specific intent” and the second “general intent,” See Bidwell v. State, 656 P.2d 592 (Alaska App.1983). Under the Revised Code the two meanings of intent are separated into “intent” and “knowledge.” LaFave & Scott, at 197-98.
In summary, reckless murder occupies the middle ground between (1) mere recklessness, creating a substantial risk of death, and (2) knowledge, creating a virtual certainty of death. Before Pears could be found guilty of murder, his recklessness must be found to approach knowledge that his acts were practically certain to cause death or serious physical injury.
Three factors, in my opinion, distinguish this case from the typical drunk driver homicide. First, Pears drove despite the fact that his companion, Kathy Hill, warned him that his driving was endangering her and other people. Second, Pears was stopped by two uniformed police officers and told not to drive and by his conduct led the police officers to believe that he would not drive. Finally, the evidence supports a finding that Pears just missed colliding with a number of other vehicles on the road prior to the eventual homicide. Given these factors, I think a prima facie case of murder was made. It was therefore a jury question as to whether Pears’ conduct manifested extreme indifference to the value of human life.