statute penalizing as murder “wanton” conduct causing death, supports murder conviction for unintentional homicide
How later courts described this case
- statute penalizing as murder “wanton” conduct causing death, supports murder conviction for unintentional homicide
- ran red light at high rate of speed in drunken condition
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
PALMORE, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent from the majority opinion because I do not believe that either the drafters of the Kentucky Penal Code or the members of the General Assembly that enacted it had any intention of placing the reckless act of an automobile driver, whether drunk or sober, in the same category as that of a deliberate murderer. I concede that fatal carelessness in the operation of a motor vehicle calls for stern punishment, but murder is something else. There simply is a difference in culpability between committing an act that endangers people whose presence is known and an act that endangers people whose presence should be anticipated but in fact is not known. The quotation from Holmes in the majority opinion is misplaced. Certainly “a case could be made where the riding was so manifestly dangerous that it would be murder,” but in keeping with his illustration of exploding a barrel of gunpowder in a crowded street, that would be the case in which the guilty party rode or drove heedlessly into a person or persons known to be in his path or so near to it that he must have realized he would hit somebody. I have read a great deal of Holmes in my time. I suppose, indeed, that he has been my idol as a judicial philosopher. I am inclined to believe the decision in this case would give him an acute attack of gastritis.
I am authorized to state that CLAYTON and LUKOWSKY, JJ., join in this dissenting opinion.