Relationship Between Defendant’s Act and Fatal Car Accident Too Attenuated to Support Criminally Negligent Homicide

The Third Department determined that the relationship between the defendant’s act and a fatal car accident was too attenuated to support a conviction for criminally negligent homicide.  The defendant, a passenger, jerked the steering wheel, apparently in an attempt to intimidate or strike a car that was along side of the car defendant was in.  The car defendant was in struck a guard rail and caused the blockage of one lane of traffic.  The one car accident caused traffic to back up.  30 minutes later the fatal accident occurred.  The Third Department wrote:

“[A]n act ‘qualifies as a sufficiently direct cause when the ultimate harm should have been reasonably foreseen'”… .   A connection between the conduct and the death that is obscure or “merely probable” will not suffice ….  On the other hand, we note that the mere lapse of time will not  necessarily serve to break the chain of causation … .  Nor  does  a  defendant’s conduct  need  to be  the  sole cause  of death  in order  for criminal responsibility to attach ….  * * *

Here, the People failed to present evidence directly linking defendant’s act to the victims’ deaths …. Although the accident reconstructionist called as a witness by the People provided an opinion as to the sequence of the five-car collision, he could not estimate the speed of the vehicles involved, he did not attempt to reconstruct the initial accident and he offered no opinion to support the conclusion that the third and fatal accident was  a foreseeable result of the initial accident … . People v Ballenger, 104664, 3rd Dept, 5-30-13