People v. Van Osdoll

SCHAUER, P. J. Defendant appeals from the judgment pronounced after he was found guilty of (1) violation of section 500 of the Vehicle Code (negligent homicide) and (2) violation of section 501 of the Vehicle Code (“drunk driving”).

The sole ground of appeal is alleged insufficiency of the evidence to support the judgment, and the only particular wherein the sufficiency of the evidence is challenged is that which identifies the defendant as the driver of the culpably operated automobile. The judgment must be affirmed.

No witness was produced who testified that he had seen and recognized the defendant as the driver of the automobile while it was in motion. The defendant himself testified that he owned and had driven the ear from the city of Glendale to a point about eight miles south of the town of Palmdale, and that there, after a brief stop, he and his companion, one Odin Hatfield, who was the brother - in - law of defendant, exchanged places and that Mr. Hatfield was driving, with defendant riding as a passenger, at the time of an accident in which the former was fatally injured. Immediately after the crash the defendant stepped out of the car and during the ensuing several minutes he told various persons that he was the driver; to quote his own language as a witness, he testified, “I told everybody that I met that I was driving.” Defendant further testified, however, in effect, that he made such statements not because they were true but because he “felt morally responsible for the whole thing.”

On this appeal it is argued that the evidence, other than defendant’s extrajudicial admissions, not only fails to prove that defendant was driving at the time of the collision but by a clear preponderance establishes the untruth of defendant’s admissions and the truth of his presently asserted hypothesis that he was the passenger and Hatfield the driver. The evidence from which defendant draws his inferences is in substance as follows: Defendant was only slightly injured, while the decedent suffered a broken leg and severe head and chest injuries; photographs of the ear in which they were riding show that most of its damage was on its left side; the steering wheel was bent, and the windshield, which was in two sections, was more extensively damaged in the left than in the right section; defendant’s exhibits A and B (photographs) disclose a jagged hole near the right side of the left section adjacent to the center post. It may be inferred [458]that it was decedent’s body which crushed the steering wheel and decedent’s head which crashed the glass. But that does not place him in the driver’s seat.