Court Opinion

ID: 9628350
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:17:38.759236+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:05:25.240235
License: Public Domain

CONNOR, Justice,
dissenting, with whom RABINOWITZ, Justice, joins.
I concur with the majority opinion except with the portions dealing with the standard of culpably negligent conduct and the related jury instructions. With respect to those portions, I respectfully dissent.
*481I
The majority opinion states that driving while intoxicated, without more, is sufficient to sustain a conviction for negligent homicide. But culpable negligence requires “a degree of conduct more reckless and wanton than would be involved in ordinary negligence . . . De Sacia v. State, 469 P.2d 369, 372 (Alaska 1970). Although driving after excessive drinking may in fact supply the element of recklessness to raise that behavior to the level of culpable negligence, driving after drinking moderately may constitute no negligence at all if the driver is exercising due care. This distinction between recklessness and ordinary negligence has long been recognized in the law. See J. Hall, General Principles of Criminal Law (2d ed. 1960), 127-28; R. Perkins, Criminal Law (1957) 60-64; Hall, Negligent Behavior Should Be Excluded From Penal Liability, 63 Colum.L.Rev. 632 (1963). I see no reason for this court to blur that distinction, thus causing confusion about the applicable legal standard.1
Unlike negligence, recklessness depends upon a subjective evaluation of defendant’s conduct. As Professor Hall noted:
Recklessness no less than intention includes a distinctive state of awareness. To ascertain whether recklessness existed, we must determine the actor’s knowledge of the facts and his estimate of his conduct with reference to the increase of risk. In the determination of these questions the introduction of the “reasonable man” is not a substitute for defendant’s awareness that his conduct increased the risk of harm any more than it is a substitute for the determination of intention, where that is material [Ujnless it is determined that the defendant knew he was increasing the risk of harm, it cannot be defensibly held that he acted recklessly.
J. Hall, General Principles of Criminal Law 120 (2d ed. 1960).
The highest courts of other states have maintained this distinction between culpably negligent conduct and driving while under the influence of intoxicating liquor, holding that driving while intoxicated is a factor to be considered by the jury in assessing a defendant’s conduct in negligent homicide cases, but is not itself sufficient to convict without other evidence of wanton or reckless conduct. Smith v. State, 65 So.2d 303 (Fla.1953); Cutshall v. State, 191 Miss. 764, 4 So.2d 289 (1941); State v. Sisneros, 42 N.M. 500, 82 P.2d 274 (1938). “It is not the fact but the effect of the intoxication which is relevant.” Cutshall v. State, supra, 4 So.2d at 292. These cases are still good law. See e. g., Grantham v. State, 358 So.2d 878 (Fla.App.1978); Murray v. State, 329 So.2d 349 (Fla.App.1976); Gant v. State, 244 So.2d 18 (Miss.1971); Jones v. State, 244 Miss. 596, 145 So.2d 446 (1962); Smith v. State, 197 Miss. 802, 20 So.2d 701 (1945). In several other jurisdictions the highest courts have carefully delineated the offenses of driving while under the influence of intoxicating liquor and reckless driving, holding that the fact of violation of a statutory prohibition (including driving under the influence) does not in and of itself warrant the bringing of a charge of recklessness. State v. Lunt, 106 R.I. 379, 260 A.2d 149 (1969); State v. Hargis, 5 Conn.Cir. 231, 249 A.2d 663 (1968); State v. Licari, 132 Conn. 220, 43 A.2d 450 (1945).
I do not suggest here that driving while under the influence can never constitute culpably negligent conduct, but rather that a range of effects upon driving behavior can result from drinking, and that a drinking driver can in fact exercise due care. *482There is a spectrum of impairment possible from ingestion of the same relative amount of alcohol, depending on the individual’s “capacity,” recent food consumption, emotional state, etc. See e. g., Havard, “Alcohol in Relation to Road Traffic,” Gradwohl’s Legal Medicine, ch. 37 (2d ed. 1968). The statutory level of .10% blood alcohol gives rise only to a presumption that a person’s driving skills have been affected by his drinking. AS 28.35.033(a)(3). That the defendant in a negligent homicide case may have been drinking prior to the victim’s death cannot transform conduct which is non-negligent or merely negligent into conduct which is culpably negligent.
II
In my opinion jury instructions No. 9 and No. 13 constitute error because they set forth different standards of culpably negligent conduct, creating the danger of a non-unanimous verdict. Instruction No. 9 would allow the jury to convict Lupro of negligent homicide solely for the act of driving while intoxicated. Instruction No. 13 sets a different standard of culpable negligence that requires “driving . a motor vehicle negligently in addition to driving while intoxicated.” (Id., para. 3) Together, these instructions create the possibility of confusion among the members of the jury as to which standard the court intended. There could have been significant disagreement among the members of the jury as to what Lupro did. Because these instructions may have judicially sanctioned a non-unanimous verdict, Lupro’s conviction should be reversed.
Instruction No. 13 was also prejudicial to Lupro because of the internal contradiction created by references first to “culpable negligence,” and thereafter to “negligence” (meaning, presumably, ordinary negligence) within that instruction. It states that, to find the appellant culpably negligent, the jury need find only that he was “driving . negligently” and that he “acted negligently.” (Id., para. 3) In a recent negligent homicide case, we held that it was reversible error to omit the word “culpable” from the instruction defining negligent homicide. Stork v. State, 559 P.2d 99 (Alaska 1977). Appellant here has been similarly prejudiced. In my view, the instructions as given constitute plain error.
Ill
I concur with the majority opinion that Instruction No. 27 does not create a danger of a non-unanimous verdict, if, as it assumes, the act of driving while under the influence of intoxicating liquor is alone sufficient to sustain the conviction. Assuming arguendo that culpably negligent conduct requires an act of a reckless character, and that driving while intoxicated is simply one factor to be considered in assessing Lupro’s conduct, I, too, do not reach the issue of a non-unanimous verdict, since none of the acts listed in Instruction No. 27, with the exception of the charge of reckless driving, would in itself constitute culpable conduct. There remains, however, the very real possibility that the jury was thoroughly confused by the giving of this superfluous instruction.2
For these reasons, I believe the conviction should be reversed and the case remanded for a new trial. In all other respects I concur with the majority opinion.

. I have found only one case that supports the majority, State v. Kellison, 233 Iowa 1274, 11 N.W.2d 371 (1943), in which the Iowa court held that driving while intoxicated resulting in death is “malum in se . . and is clearly an unlawful act within the definition of manslaughter.” Id. 11 N.W.2d at 373. The majority cites State v. Montieth, 247 Or. 43, 417 P.2d 1012 (1966), to support this standard, but the Supreme Court of Oregon actually held instead that “Where the state produces evidence of [driving while intoxicated], together with any act of negligence causing death, there is sufficient connection between the drunkenness and the negligence to constitute gross negligence.” [emphasis added] Montieth, 417 P.2d at 1015. This standard of culpable negligence was argued .for by Lupro.

. It is only if the standard of negligent conduct is driving while intoxicated plus an act of ordinary negligence that the issue of the non-unanimous verdict arises. In that case, the jurors must agree on which act or acts of ordinary negligence were committed by the defendant. The selection of any of several alternatives by each member of the jury is not enough. U. S. v. Gipson, 553 F.2d 453 (5th Cir. 1977).