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People v. Wright6/28/2002
UNPUBLISHED
Following a jury trial, defendant was convicted of receiving and concealing stolen property in excess of $20,000, MCL 750.535(2)(a), involuntary manslaughter with a motor vehicle, MCL 750.321, and leaving the scene of a serious personal injury accident, MCL 257.617. He was sentenced to concurrent terms of two to five years for the stolen property conviction, five to fifteen years for the manslaughter conviction, and two to five years for the leaving the scene conviction. Defendant appeals as of right, and we affirm.
I.
Defendant first argues that the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction of manslaughter because there was no evidence that he was driving in a grossly negligent manner at the time he struck the decedent's car. We disagree.
When assessing whether sufficient evidence was presented to support a conviction, this Court views the evidence in a light most favorable to the prosecution and determines whether a rational trier of fact could find that the essential elements of the crime were proved beyond a reasonable doubt. People v Wolfe, 440 Mich 508, 515; 489 NW2d 748 (1992), amended 441 Mich 1201 (1992). Circumstantial evidence and reasonable inferences arising from the evidence may be sufficient to prove the elements of a crime. People v McKenzie, 206 Mich App 425, 428; 522 NW2d 661 (1994). This Court will not interfere with the trier of fact's role of determining the weight of evidence or the credibility of witnesses. Wolfe, supra at 514.
To establish that defendant was guilty of involuntary manslaughter with a motor vehicle, the prosecutor was required to prove that defendant committed an unlawful act in a grossly negligent, wanton, or reckless manner, causing the death of another. People v Datema, 448 Mich 585, 606; 533 NW2d 272 (1995); People v Rettelle, 173 Mich App 196, 199; 433 NW2d 401 (1988). To establish gross negligence, the following elements must be proven:
(1) Knowledge of a situation requiring the exercise of ordinary care and diligence to avert injury to another.
(2) Ability to avoid the resulting harm by ordinary care and diligence in the use of the means at hand.
(3) The omission to use such care and diligence to avert the threatened danger when to the ordinary mind it must be apparent that the result is likely to prove disastrous to another. [People v McCoy, 223 Mich App 500, 503; 566 NW2d 667 (1997) (citations omitted).]
In Datema, supra at 604, our Supreme Court explained:
riminal intention anchors one end of the spectrum and negligence anchors the other. Intention . . . "emphasiz that the actor seeks the proscribed harm not in the sense that he desires it, but in the sense that he has chosen it, he has decided to bring it into being." Negligence, lying at the opposite end of the spectrum, "implies inadvertence, i.e., that the defendant was completely unaware of the dangerousness of this behavior although actually it was unreasonably increasing the risk of occurrence of an injury ."
Criminal negligence, also referred to as gross negligence, lies within the extremes of intention and negligence. As with intention, the actor realizes the risk of his behavior and consciously decides to create that risk. As with negligence, however, the actor does not seek to cause harm, but is simply "recklessly or wantonly indifferent to the results." [Citations omitted; emphasis added.]
In this case, a trier of fact could properly infer that defendant knew that the act of driving requires ordinary care and diligence to avert injury to others. Similarly, a trier of fact could properly infer, under these facts, that
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