Death Due to DUI/DWI

Facing a charge for driving under the influence or driving while intoxicated (DUI-DWI) is a serious situation for any driver. The challenges are far more serious when the charge is for some form of vehicular homicide when someone was killed as the result of a crash where the driver was under the influence of alcohol, even at a level insufficient to support a DUI-DWI charge. Knowing the elements of homicide charges stemming from drunk-driving accidents and understanding the prosecution of such cases can help in coping with the situation.

Definition of Vehicular Homicide

Vehicular homicide is defined as a distinct offense in many jurisdictions, with the essential elements being that:

• A homicide was committed

• By means of a vehicle

• The operator of which was impaired by alcohol at the time of the accident

Some states require the prosecution to prove that a driver was intoxicated under state law at the time of the accident to support a conviction, and others only require proof that alcohol impairment of the driver was a proximate cause of the death. Proximate cause is something which, in a natural and continuous sequence, unbroken by any intervening cause, produces injury, and without which the result would not have occurred.
Not all homicides, or the killing of persons, are crimes. The definitions of homicide-related crimes will vary among jurisdictions, but there are key differences between the several types of crimes.

• Murder involves malice, and some jurisdictions will include deaths caused by drunk driving within the definition of murder.

• Manslaughter involves intent to kill, but not malice, or actions that are reckless, wanton and grossly negligent, which result in a person's death, without intent to kill. Manslaughter offenses may be categorized by degree, or there may be a distinction between voluntary and involuntary manslaughter.

• Some jurisdictions will have a lesser offense of criminally negligent homicide, in which a person caused another person's death by driving a vehicle in a criminally negligent manner, but the circumstances did not amount to a manslaughter or a murder offense.

Proof of Vehicular Homicide and Defending the Case

From the time of the arrival of the police at an accident scene, investigation of the accident and the collection of evidence will be important to both the prosecution and the defense in a vehicular homicide case. Given the nature of the crime, the defendant in a drunk driving vehicular homicide case will be an unpopular defendant, yet he may be a driver who until the time of the accident had a clean driving record and now may be facing mandatory sentencing and imprisonment if convicted. The role of a driver's defense attorney is crucial from the earliest stages of the case, as is the role of the prosecutor, who will often have to seek a conviction based on circumstantial evidence because there are often no witnesses in drunk driving cases.
The key element in a case will be to prove the driver's intoxication or that he was influenced by alcohol, and that his condition was the proximate cause of the death. A driver's defense attorney will likely start an independent investigation of the accident, and will seek to eliminate fault of the driver in the accident. Both police and defense investigations will seek to answer:

• Whether the defendant was the driver of the vehicle in question

• Whether the defendant/driver was intoxicated or under the influence of alcohol at the time of the accident

• Whether the defendant's/driver's use of alcohol caused the accident (there may also be attempts to assign fault to other parties, such as the driver's companions/passengers or the party who provided the driver with alcohol)

• Whether the defendant's/driver's car was involved in the accident, which may be a question in hit and run cases

The prosecution and the defense will rely upon several categories of evidence:

• Evidence from the accident scene, including physical evidence, photos of the scene and the vehicle's interior, measurements, and street markings

• Identification of the driver involved in the accident

• Testimony from a crash investigator/crash reconstructionist

• Expert witness testimony on the vital question of whether a crime or an accident has occurred, based on whether the driver's use of alcohol was the proximate cause of the crash