State v. Smith, Minn.S.Ct., 8/14/2013. This comes up from the court of appeals. Read here. A jury convicted Mr. Smith of criminal vehicular homicide for causing the death of a 93-year old, Ms. Schouveller, who was a passenger in the car that Mr. Smith crashed into. Ms. Schouveller developed multiple complications from her injuries, which necessitated the need for intubation. However, Ms. Schouveller’s living will prohibited that procedure. She died about a month after the car crash.
Mr. Smith argued that the “do not resuscitate” order was an superseding cause of Ms. Schouveller’s death, that the trial court had incorrectly instructed the jury on causation, and that the state had presented insufficient evidence to prove causation. Justice Page, writing for a five member court – Wright and Lillehaug not participating – rejects all of these claims.
Mr. Smith did not object to the causation instruction so the review is for plain error. Mr. Smith said that the instruction had been correct as far as it went, but the jury should also have been told that a finding of a superseding cause defeated the state’s proof of causation. Justice Page concludes that additional language was unnecessary so the instruction was proper.
The court also rejected Mr. Smith’s sufficiency argument. The court said that Mr. Smith’s conduct did not need to be the immediate cause of death, only the proximate cause. It is sufficient if a defendant’s act was “the cause of the cause” of death.
On the intervening cause argument, such an intervening event must be the sole cause of the end result. State v. Olson, 435 N.W.2d 530 (Minn. 1989). The court would not adopt the state’s argument that a victim’s refusal of medical care may never be a superseding cause of death. Rather, this is a question of fact for the jury. For Mr. Smith, the court concludes that there was sufficient evidence for the jury to find that the do not resuscitate order was not a superseding cause of death.
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