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Court of Appeal:
Judge Wasn’t Obliged to Instruct Jury on Vehicular Manslaughter in DUI Death
That Offense Is Related to Second-Degree Murder but Is Not a Lesser Included Offense, Opinion Says
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Div. Three of the Fourth District Court of Appeal yesterday affirmed the second-degree murder conviction of a man who, driving while intoxicated, lost control of his vehicle, running into and killing a 6-year-old girl, rejecting his contention that he was unfairly prejudiced by the prosecution not charging the lesser related offense of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and the judge not instructing the jury on that offense sua sponte.
Acting Presiding Justice Eileen C. Moore authored the opinion which rejects the contentions by Maximino Delgado Lagunas, who had a blood alcohol level of .22 percent on Feb. 17, 2018, when he fatally struck the child, who was playing on a sidewalk. The legal limit is .08 percent.
Moore set forth in a footnote:
“Lagunas argues: ‘Criminal courts are not supposed to be gambling halls where juries are faced with all or nothing verdicts.’ Lagunas claims the prosecution ‘engineered an all or nothing case by only charging second degree murder, betting that no jury would let appellant walk free after causing the death of an innocent little girl.’ We are not taking a position on this oft-raised argument, but we are publishing this opinion to make clear that this argument is more properly directed to the Legislature.”
Not ‘Lesser Included’
Moore declared:
“Generally, a trial court must instruct a jury on any lesser included offenses that are supported by the evidence….However, without the consent of the prosecutor, a trial court has no obligation to instruct a jury on any lesser related offenses….
“When a defendant is charged with murder, a gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated charge may be a related offense, but it is not necessarily included within a murder charge.”
Accordingly, Orange Superior Court Judge Michael A. Leverson committed no error in declining to instruct the jury on manslaughter, she said. There was, Moore said, substantial evidence that Lagunas “deliberately acted with conscious disregard for human life (implied malice).” She wrote:
“Lagunas cites no California published opinions in which an appellate court has ever reversed a defendant’s implied malice murder conviction involving driving under the influence…on the basis of insufficient evidence. And in our legal research, we have similarly found no such published opinions.
“Nonetheless, Lagunas cites numerous published opinions in which appellate courts have affirmed implied malice murder convictions…when the defendant has challenged the sufficiency of the evidence. Ostensibly, Lagunas cites these opinions for the purpose of arguing that there were more egregious facts present in those cases as compared to the facts in the instant case.”
Argument Found Meritless
The jurist commented:
“[E]ven if we accept Lagunas’ premise that there are prior published opinions that contain more egregious hazardous driving and/or higher levels of alcohol intoxication by those particular defendants, that argument simply does not negate the substantial evidence that exists in this case. Our role in a sufficiency of the evidence review is not to engage in a comparative analysis of various cases, but rather to carefully scrutinize the record in the instant case for substantial evidence (as we have).”
Lagunas was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.
Orange District Attorney Todd Spitzer commented at the time the jury brought in its verdict on June 22, 2022:
“This is a tragedy that should never have happened and Grace [Aguilar] should still be alive today. Every time someone drives under the influence of drugs or alcohol, they take the risk that they could kill someone. And this time he did —and it was a little six-year-old girl named Grace.”
The case is People v. Lagunas, G061812.
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