This was the issue before the Third Department yesterday in People v Cabrera, 2007 NY Slip Op 03798. The answer that the Court provided was ... well sort of. The case arose out of a horrible one car crash involving teenagers. In June 2004, while driving four of his friends to a lake, defendant lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a telephone pole and tree, killing three of his four teenage passengers and fracturing the spine of the fourth. Witnesses indicated that the weather was clear and dry at the time of the accident, there were no obstructions on the rural road, and the vehicle had no mechanical defects or tire problems that would have caused the accident. Nevertheless, defendant lost control of the vehicle while negotiating a curve and dip in the roadway at the bottom of a hill, partially crossed into the left lane and then skidded off the road. Witnesses following defendant's vehicle indicated that he was speeding and did not slow down when approaching the curve in the road, and an accident reconstructionist estimated that the vehicle was traveling between 70 and 72 miles per hour when it began to spin out of control. The posted speed limit on the road in the vicinity was 55 miles per hour and, a short distance before the curve, there was a hazard sign with a recommended speed limit of 40 miles per hour. The defendant was charged with criminally negligent homicide (Penal Law § 125.10) and other crimes. The defendant conceded that the People proved that he drove 72 miles per hour in a 55 mile-per-hour zone. But, he argued that evidence of this speed alone was not legally sufficient to sustain the charges of criminally negligent homicide (in addition to criminally negligent assault in the third degree), and that the record contained no further admissible evidence with respect to those charges.
Older Court of Appeals had suggested that speed alone was not sufficient to establish criminally negligent homicide, while newer cases suggested that it could. Citing the Second Department in People v Senisi, 196 AD2d 376, the Third Department thus stated,
the rule that proof of speed alone will not support a finding of criminal negligence is "decisive only in that extremely rare case" where there is no additional proof regarding, for example, "the presence or position of other vehicles, the presence or position of pedestrians, the condition or width of the roadway, the condition of the defendant's car, the lighting conditions, the presence or absence of obstructions to the defendant's field of vision, the physical condition of the defendant himself, the rate of acceleration, or any of a myriad of other factors" (id. at 379-380).
In the case before it, the Third Department noted that in addition to exceeding the speed limit there were other factors involved. The section of road involved a downhill curve, the defendant ignored hazard signs to lower his speed in the curve, and he had thus crossed a yellow center line. In addition, the Court noted that as a holder of a junior license, the defendant was required to insure that his passengers were wearing seat belts, and that no more than two of his passengers were under the age of 21, which he failed to do (see Vehicle and Traffic Law § 501-b [1]). Thus, with these additional factors present, the Court found that the evidence was legally sufficient to sustain his conviction for criminally negligent homicide.
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