No Mandatory Presumption of Vehicular Manslaughter in Drunk Driving

07/06/12

On Thursday, a New York State appeal court dismissed a constitutional challenge to the state's vehicular manslaughter law. That by itself is uninteresting. But what is interesting in the judgment was that the bench ordered a retrial of the convicted driver finding that the judge who presided over the trial had misinterpreted the law.


Steven Stickler of Chemung County was convicted of vehicular manslaughter for causing the death of a passenger as he was driving while drunk. In May 2010, Stickler ran the all-terrain vehicle he was driving off the road and 24-year old Joshua Long was thrown out of the vehicle and killed. Stickler admitted to drinking, and he was charged with two counts of driving while intoxicated and one count of vehicular manslaughter. His motion to dismiss the indictment on constitutional grounds was rejected but the appeals court found that the trial judge erred in application of the law and overturned the vehicular manslaughter conviction ordering a retrial.

The appeals court held that Hayden, the trial judge, “did not determine whether (Stickler), in fact, operated the vehicle in a manner that caused the victim's death and did so as a result of unlawful intoxication.” Justice Thomas Mercure wrote that the statute requires prosecutors to first prove that it was the defendant's driving that caused a victim's death before instructing the jury to presume that the accident was caused due to intoxication.

The appeals court found that the trial court made a mistake by assuming that such presumption was mandatory and not permissive. The fact is Section 125.12 of the state Penal Law allows prosecutors to make a ‘rebuttable' presumption that a death from a drunken driving accident was due to the driver's intoxication. However, such presumption cannot be automatically made by the prosecutors, but it is subject to the discretion of the judge. And the judge cannot waive the requirement of exercising such discretion without rationale.

The appeals court also observed that the 2005 amendment made to the vehicular manslaughter statute that allowed the prosecutors to make a rebuttable presumption subject to discretion of the judge was “intended to strengthen the deterrent effect … by eliminating the heavy prosecutorial burden” of showing that it was intoxication that led to an accident. However, the elimination of the prosecutorial burden was balanced by the requirement of properly administered judicial discretion – the absence of which made the prosecutorial presumption invalid.

The case is People v. Steven Stickler, New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department, No. 104734.