People v. Salazar

BARNARD, P. J.

The defendant was convicted of negligent homicide, under section 500 of the Vehicle Code, as a result of an automobile collision which occurred about 11 o’clock P. M. on July 9, 1937, on U. S. Highway 99, between El Centro and Heber. This highway runs east and west, was paved to a width of twenty feet and had a white stripe along the center of the pavement. A collision occurred between a Ford coupe driven in an easterly direction by .the defendant and a Chevrolet sedan driven in a westerly direction by one Charles Gillett, as a result of which Gillett died. The case was tried before a jury and the defendant has appealed from the judgment and from an order denying a new trial upon the sole ground that the evidence is insufficient to support the verdict and judgment.

Two officers who arrived at the scene shortly after the accident testified that they found the deceased’s car on the north side of the highway facing south, and the defendant’s car on the south side of the highway, some ten or fifteen feet easterly from the other car, and headed in a northwesterly direction. They also testified that they found oil, tire and other marks on the north half of the pavement; that the pavement was skinned; that they followed the skinned place on the pavement, which led to the appellant’s car, a distance of twenty-seven feet; that the engine of the appellant’s car had broken from its frame and the front part thereof was resting on the ground; and that the skinned place on the pavement began at a point three feet four inches north of the center line, about opposite where the deceased’s car was resting, and led continuously to the point where the front end of the engine of appellant’s car was resting on the ground.

The appellant contends that the state’s case rests entirely upon the conclusion that he is guilty because his car, in some unknown way, made these marks while the undisputed testimony of his witnesses shows that the collision took

[594]

place on the south side of the center line of the pavement, where he was rightfully driving. It is argued that in order to sustain a conclusion that the collision took place on the north half of the pavement where the marks began "the court must wholly disregard the undisputed testimony on the part of the defendant and a Mr. Stindt, who was the only witness to the accident, and also disregard the operation of certain natural laws of which the court takes judicial notice ’ ’.