Court Opinion

ID: 9865119
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 16:24:19.270582+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:37:26.784783
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Bouck,
dissenting.
For the first time since becoming a member of the Supreme Court, I am dissenting from an opinion of my colleagues without basing the dissent wholly upon what is shown by the record sent us from the court below. Partly — and, as a-matter of fact, largely — I form my conclusion from the undeniable physical facts. I personally viewed that portion of the road where, under the uncontradicted evidence, the automobile collision here in question took place; I viewed those portions constituting the approaches from both directions; I viewed all the adjacent country visible from these various portions of the road. Only in such exceptional circumstances as are presented in this case could I justify my deviating from the general rule limiting reviewing judges to the court record.
Besides the defendant himself (who was convicted and sentenced to the penitentiary on a charge of negligently driving his automobile while he was under the influence of intoxicating liquor, so as to kill another person), there *566were only two eyewitnesses of the fatal collision. These were one Pargo, who was driving the other automobile, fiance of Mrs. Hartman (the younger of the two women killed) and one Mrs. Mitchell (sister of Mrs. Hartman and daughter of Mrs. Richards, who was also killed). Except for the testimony given by these two witnesses, thus actually and prospectively related to the deceased women, the evidence against the defendant was purely circumstantial. Therefore, I think, the refusal of the district court to give an instruction tendered by the defendant on circumstantial evidence was in itself sufficient prejudicial error, as shown by the record, to call for a reversal of the conviction. The main basis of my dissent, however, is the reason outside of the record, which I am about to discuss.
Riding with Pargo in his car were the witness Mrs. Mitchell and the latter’s above mentioned mother and sister. Pargo and Mrs. Mitchell, like the defendant, were rendered unconscious by the collision. This occurred east of a turn which is on the paved road between Denver and Golden immediately west of what is called Welchester. Pargo testified that, though he could not see the defendant’s automobile until the latter made the turn a few seconds before the impact, he saw certain reflections of light on trees and on the electric wires strung on poles along the road, from the time the defendant’s car was about 1200 or 1300 feet from the turn, and that he could determine from those lights that the defendant was coming on the wrong side of the road and weaving in and out, wobbling from side to side. Mrs. Mitchell corroborated him. They testified that the defendant’s speed was sixty miles per hour.
The extraordinary testimony thus positively given on the witness stand, with other testimony of Pargo’s, aroused in my mind a strong suspicion that, if not necessarily perjured, the testimony was palpably false.
After studying the record in a sincere attempt to overcome my suspicion, but in vain, I made two different *567journeys in daylight over the ground involved. These brought a conviction that the physical facts which I examined rendered the testimony of the two witnesses incredible. I took another trip in the night-time, which enabled me to test, even more fairly, certain of Pargo’s statements about lights and light effects. As a result, my observations proved conclusively to my mind that— in the light of the location, condition, and direction of the road, including the fatal curve, and because of the inevitable obscuring of one’s view by the trees and shrubbery and by the grades and turn of the road — the story told by Pargo of what he could discern in respect to the defendant’s car, before this made the turn just before the accident, was not founded in fact. It may well have been evolved honestly by an unreliable imagination working together unconsciously with a dazed and distorted memory of a terrible happening. But it was false.
By way of summary, I therefore say:
My reading and repeated rereading of the recorded evidence left in my mind a disturbing doubt of the defendant’s guilt as measured by that evidence.
Then I sought- — not further human evidence, but — the irrefutable physical evidence that did not depend upon any human witness for its strength. (The jury had not “viewed the premises,” as I did, and so it had no opportunity to test the human evidence by the unimpeachable physical evidence.)
Having found that the human and the physical evidence could not both be true, I naturally discard the former. I cannot concur in sustaining a conviction when the indispensable evidence in its support is proved false.
Therefore I believe that the defendant is in all fairness entitled to a new trial. Since my brethren, by their opinion, indicate that he is not so entitled, I am compelled to dissent.