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Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama • 1985

Lewis v. State

474 So. 2d 766

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Takeaway

In short, this case holds that teaching or encouraging dangerous conduct does not establish criminally negligent homicide when the victim later acts alone and that independent act breaks the chain of legal causation.

Background

Alvin Ronald Lewis and fifteen-year-old Damon Sanders had played Russian roulette on the day Sanders died. Lewis had also previously played the game with his brother while Sanders watched. Later that night, a witness saw Sanders alone in the trailer, holding a gun and spinning its chamber; a sound like a gunshot followed shortly afterward. The medical examiner concluded that the contact gunshot wound was characteristic of a self-inflicted wound, although he could not determine the manner of death.

Lewis initially told police that he had put the gun away and was speaking on the telephone when he heard a noise. He found Sanders wounded, then removed Sanders's body, towel, and shirt from the trailer before eventually returning the body and calling police. Lewis also wiped the gun, fired it into the ground, and placed it in Sanders's hand. At trial, the court granted Lewis's motion for acquittal on murder and manslaughter after the State rested, but submitted criminally negligent homicide to the jury. The jury convicted Lewis, and the trial court imposed a twelve-month county-jail sentence.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the evidence was sufficient to sustain Lewis's conviction for criminally negligent homicide.

Holding

No. The State did not prove that Lewis criminally caused Sanders's death, an essential element of criminally negligent homicide.

Reasoning

Criminally negligent homicide requires proof that the defendant caused another person's death through criminal negligence. Under Alabama law, criminal negligence means failing to perceive a substantial and unjustifiable risk in a manner that grossly departs from the reasonable standard of care. Thus, the State had to establish not merely that Lewis behaved recklessly in introducing Sanders to Russian roulette, but also that his conduct legally caused Sanders's death.

The evidence showed that Lewis and Sanders had finished playing and that Lewis had put the gun away. The record further indicated that Sanders later obtained the gun and was alone when he spun the chamber and apparently shot himself. Although Lewis's earlier conduct was irresponsible and may have taught or encouraged Sanders to play the game, the evidence did not establish that Lewis should have perceived that Sanders would later retrieve the gun and play alone.

Because the proof did not establish the required causal connection between Lewis's negligence and the fatal shooting, the conviction could not stand. The court therefore reversed the judgment and rendered a judgment in Lewis's favor rather than ordering a new trial.

Issue #2

Whether Sanders's act of obtaining the gun and shooting himself was an intervening cause that broke the chain of causation.

Holding

Yes. Sanders's voluntary, independent conduct was a supervening intervening cause that severed causation between Lewis's earlier conduct and the death.

Reasoning

Alabama's causation statute generally makes a person criminally liable when a result would not have occurred but for that person's conduct, unless a concurrent cause was itself sufficient to produce the result and the defendant's conduct was clearly insufficient. In cases involving a victim's self-destruction, the court explained, the central inquiry is whether the defendant's conduct caused the act or whether the victim acted through his own free will.

Lewis would have been causally responsible if Sanders had been shot while the two were playing Russian roulette together, or if Lewis had left while Sanders was still engaged in the game. In either circumstance, Lewis's participation or immediate abandonment of the activity could make the death a foreseeable consequence of his conduct.

But the evidence instead showed a break in events: Lewis put the gun away, and Sanders later acted alone. Sanders's decision to get the gun, load or manipulate it, and shoot himself was an independent exercise of free will. That decision was sufficient to constitute a supervening cause, even if Sanders might never have engaged in Russian roulette without Lewis's prior influence.

Concurrences

Judge Bowen

Reasoning

Judge Bowen concurred only in the result. The opinion reports no separate written explanation of his reasoning, so it does not identify an alternative basis for reversal.