Sandwick v. District of Columbia

21 A.3d 997, 2011 D.C. App. LEXIS 362, 2011 WL 2473459
CourtDistrict of Columbia Court of Appeals
DecidedJune 23, 2011
Docket10-CT-111
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 21 A.3d 997 (Sandwick v. District of Columbia) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District of Columbia Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Sandwick v. District of Columbia, 21 A.3d 997, 2011 D.C. App. LEXIS 362, 2011 WL 2473459 (D.C. 2011).

Opinion

OBERLY, Associate Judge:

Michael Sandwick was charged in May 2009 with leaving the scene of an accident involving personal injuries, a violation of D.C.Code § 50-2201.05(a)(2) (2009 Supp.). He was convicted after a bench trial in January 2010, and now makes four arguments on appeal: (1) the trial court applied the wrong mental state under the statute; (2) the charging document was defective because it failed to allege a culpable mental state; (3) the trial court should have dismissed the charge because the government failed to preserve evidence; and (4) there was insufficient evidence to support his conviction. Because we find none of Sandwick’s arguments persuasive, we affirm.

I. Facts

Norman Shore testified that he was struck by a blue pickup truck as he attempted to cross 16th Street in Northwest Washington, D.C. on the night of January 19, 2009, and was taken to the hospital by ambulance, where he was treated for cuts and abrasions. Joanna Lahaie testified that she was standing ten feet away from where the accident occurred, and saw “a pickup truck driving down 16th Street ... collide with a gentleman who [got airborne and] fell down, and at that point the car slowed, but then continued on.” Sandwick testified in his own defense and claimed that his “driver’s window just shattered” while he was driving south on 16th Street, and that he had no idea what had happened but assumed that it was “[s]ome sort of act of vandalism.” According to Sandwick, he “slowed down and looked around,” but did not see anything. He claimed that he was unable to stop immediately after the impact of the glass window shattering because of traffic. Sand-wick’s wife, Melina Papadopoulos, testified that she was a passenger in the truck that night, and that their truck window “just *1000 blew in.” She claimed that they stopped and looked around after the accident, but did not see anything. The trial court credited the testimony of the government’s witnesses, found Sandwick guilty, and sentenced him to, inter alia, 120 days in prison with all but two weekends suspended.

II. Discussion

We review Sandwick’s first argument, that the trial court applied the wrong standard for the mental state required under the statute, de novo. See Banks v. United States, 955 A.2d 709, 711 (D.C.2008). D.C.Code § 50-2201.05(a)(1) makes it a crime for “[a]ny person operating a vehicle, who shall injure any person therewith ... [to] fail to stop and give assistance, together with his name, place of residence, including street and number, and the name and address of the owner of the vehicle so operated, to the person so injured.... ” The statute is silent with respect to mens rea, and Sandwick argues that the government must prove that he knew two things: “(1) ... that he had been involved in an accident or collision[,] and (2) that a person had been physically injured in the collision.”

We agree that a mental element must be read into the statute, which “ ‘imposes upon the driver of a vehicle a positive, affirmative course of action; it specifically designates several acts following the accident which the operator of the vehicle must do to avoid the statutory penalty. It is inconceivable that the legislature intended that punishment would be imposed for failure to follow the course of conduct outlined, if the operator of the vehicle was ignorant of the happening of an accident.’ ” State v. Vela, 100 Wash.2d 636, 673 P.2d 185, 187 (1983) (quoting State v. Martin, 73 Wash.2d 616, 440 P.2d 429, 436 (1968)). Clearly, a person must have knowledge that a collision has occurred to be convicted of violating the statute. However, we reject Sandwick’s argument that § 50-2201.05(a)(1) also requires knowledge of personal injury, because “such a requirement would practically destroy the purpose of the statute.” Vela, 673 P.2d at 188. The rule Sandwick urges would encourage “a driver to remain ignorant of the actual consequences of [an] accident. If he does not stop to investigate, he will likely not have knowledge whether anyone was injured.... Such a result would reward a motorist who deliberately remains ignorant of the results of his accident.” Id. at 188-89. Accordingly, we hold that a driver who knows that he or she has been involved in a collision in which there is a possibility that another person has been injured has a duty under D.C.Code § 50-2201.05(a)(1) to stop and investigate whether injury actually occurred.

In any event, Sandwick’s argument fails because the trial court found that he did have knowledge of both the collision and Shore’s injuries. The court found that the impact of the collision “would be nearly impossible for [the people in the truck] to miss ... given that the impact was such that the victim ... was thrown into the air three feet.” The court “fully credited] the [eyewitness] testimony ... [that] the car in fact did slow down after the impact meaning that the people in the car, at least the driver[,] knew that an impact ... had occurred.” The trial court did not credit Sandwick’s testimony that after the impact “he was trying to figure out what happened[,] [because] [a]nybody trying to figure out what happened could easily see somebody lying in the street as a result of the impact.” The trial judge found that “the evidence [wa]s quite compelling,” and she “fully credited] the testimony of the government’s witnesses and dr[e]w the compelling inference from that testimony that [Sandwick] did know that he had struck a pedestrian at that time[,] if not at *1001 that moment then immediately after-wards.” Thus, having found that Sand-wick did in fact know that he had struck Shore, the trial court did not misapply the statute’s knowledge requirement.

Sandwick’s second argument, made for the first time on appeal, is that his rights were violated because the charging document failed to allege that he knew of the accident and resulting injury before he left the scene. Informations attacked for the first time on appeal are “liberally construed in favor of validity,” United States v. Bradford, 482 A.2d 430, 433 (D.C.1984) (quotation marks omitted), and “should be dismissed only if a miscarriage of justice is apparent or if the information failed to give the defendant fair notice of the charges against him.” Clemons v. United States, 400 A.2d 1048, 1051 (D.C.1979). “As a constitutional matter, an indictment must contain all the elements of the offenses charged and sufficiently apprise the defendant of the charges so that he or she can prepare to meet them. Further, it must be clear enough, when coupled with the record of the proceedings, to preclude double jeopardy;

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
21 A.3d 997, 2011 D.C. App. LEXIS 362, 2011 WL 2473459, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/sandwick-v-district-of-columbia-dc-2011.