California v. Carr
Annotate this CasePetitioner Vondetrick Carr drove drunk with four children in his car. He ran three red lights; the third time, while going 70 miles an hour, he hit a pickup truck. One of the children was killed. As a result, in 2004, petitioner was convicted of, among other crimes, second degree murder. In 2021, petitioner petitioned to vacate the murder conviction under Penal Code section 1172.6. The trial court denied the petition because petitioner was not convicted either on a natural and probable consequences theory or under the felony murder rule. Petitioner appealed, contending the theory under which he was convicted — causing death unintentionally but with implied malice while driving drunk was an “other theory under which malice is imputed to a person based solely on that person’s participation in a crime” within the meaning of section 1172.6. To this, the Court of Appeal disagreed: "Implied malice is not imputed malice. ... Petitioner’s contrary argument is an artificial concoction that takes the words 'natural consequences' and/or 'natural and probable consequences' out of their proper legal contexts and dumps them all together into a confused semantic stew." Petitioner argued that, by enacting section 1172.6 as it then stood, the California Legislature somehow embraced the view of the dissenting justices in California v. Watson, 30 Cal.3d 290 (1981) that an unintentional killing while driving drunk should be no more than vehicular manslaughter." The Court held the trial court correctly ruled petitioner was ineligible for relief under section 1172.6.
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