Too Drunk to Murder? Defense Tried In NY – Shouldn’t Work

Three criminal defendants are trying a not-new defense in a series vehicular murder trials – that they were so drunk that they couldn’t have committed murder.  All three didn’t contest their convictions ranging from reckless endangerment to vehicular manslaughter.  All three had juries convict them of murder which, in New York, like elsewhere, requires acting with depraved indifference to life.

 

Martin Heidgen: Defendant

In one case, a driver drove his pickup the wrong way on the road and hit a limousine killing the driver and a seven year-old passenger, inuring five others. He had a blood-alcohol level of 0.28.  Another was naked when she sped 80 mph without headlights, ran a red light and killed a pedestrian.  She was high on Ecstasy, smoked marijuana and drank beer.  Her attorney said that “she was driving naked because God wanted her to drive naked.”

The defense question posed is whether the defendants had the mens rea, or legal mindset, to commit murder.  The prosecution argued that the defendants knowingly took a series of acts that put them in a situation to be impaired, and that doesn’t excuse their later intoxication at the time of the murders.

As stated earlier, this type of defense isn’t new.  And, there is a difference between voluntary intoxication (where the person knowingly and voluntarily gets intoxicated, then commits a crime), and involuntary intoxication (typically where someone ingests a spiked drink).  The model penal code, which is largely followed in most jurisdictions says this:

V.T.C.A. Penal Code, Sec. 8.04, provides that voluntary intoxication is no defense to the commission of crime. Section 8.04, supra, does provide that the temporary insanity caused by intoxication can be evidence in mitigation of punishment, and if raised, the court must charge the jury on this law. This statute does not speak to involuntary intoxication.

The common law disfavor with the defense of intoxication is that it would allow a person to avoid criminal responsibility because of his voluntary act in rendering himself of unsound mind. See, Burrows v. State, supra; Colbath v. State, supra; Carter v. State, supra. This consideration does not exist when the intoxicant is not self-induced.

V.T.C.A. Penal Code, Sec. 8.01, relieves a person of criminal culpability if as the result of mental disease or defect he "did not know that his conduct was wrong or was incapable of conforming his conduct to the requirements of law." It would be inconsistent to deny this defense to a person who loses his ability to conform his conduct or perceive its culpability because of involuntary intoxication. We find that the defense of involuntary intoxication is well founded in the common law and implicit in our statutory scheme. 

This is as it should be. We as a society can’t let people off of crimes committed after they voluntarily get drunk or high, just because they get drunk or high, unless, it wasn’t their fault – because their drink was spiked.  I’d be completely shocked if New York overturns these convictions. The flood gates would open up and it’d be open season on DUI laws and drug-related violent crimes.

Full story at: http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/NY-court-weighs-too-intoxicated-murder-defense-4877264.php?cmpid=usworldhcat

See further from Torres v. State, 595 S.W.2d 746 (Tex. Crim. App. 1979).