Background
Michael Shaun Moriarty was driving on a dark rural road when his Toyota RAV4 struck Todd Mullin, who was at or near the roadway’s edge with a disabled motorcycle. Mullin, who was wearing dark clothing, died at the scene. Moriarty admitted drinking six or seven beers, and the parties stipulated that his blood-alcohol content was 0.18% at the time of the collision.
At trial, the parties’ accident-reconstruction experts disagreed about whether the collision was avoidable. The prosecution’s expert testified that Moriarty could have changed lanes or swerved, while the defense expert maintained that even a sober driver could not have perceived and avoided Mullin in time. The defense also presented evidence that Mullin had alcohol, THC, and methamphetamine in his system, although its toxicology expert could not say whether that impairment contributed to the crash. A jury convicted Moriarty of operating while intoxicated causing death, and the trial court denied his motions for a judgment of acquittal and a new trial.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the prosecution presented sufficient evidence for a rational jury to find that Moriarty’s operation of the vehicle proximately caused Mullin’s death. Viewing the evidence in the prosecution’s favor, the jury could reasonably find that Mullin’s intoxication, dark clothing, and presence with a disabled motorcycle near the shoulder amounted at most to ordinary negligence—not gross negligence or intentional misconduct that would supersede Moriarty’s conduct and break the causal chain.
The court emphasized that the jury was entitled to credit the prosecution’s reconstruction expert over the defense expert and to evaluate the evidence concerning Mullin’s impairment. It distinguished People v. Feezel because the jury here was permitted to consider the victim’s intoxication when deciding proximate cause. Moriarty expressly approved the jury instructions at trial, waiving his appellate challenge to their complexity or accuracy.
The court also held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by denying a new trial. Because the evidence reasonably supported the verdict and did not weigh so heavily against it that allowing the conviction to stand would be a miscarriage of justice, the verdict was not against the great weight of the evidence.
Key Takeaways
- A victim’s intoxication or negligence does not automatically become a superseding cause; the jury must determine whether the conduct was reasonably foreseeable or instead amounted to gross negligence or intentional misconduct.
- Conflicting expert testimony about whether a fatal collision was avoidable presented a credibility question for the jury, not grounds for appellate reweighing.
- Expressly approving jury instructions and stating that there are no objections waives appellate review of claimed instructional error.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces that proximate cause in an operating-while-intoxicated-causing-death prosecution is ordinarily a fact-specific jury question. Evidence that the victim was impaired or acted negligently may be relevant, but it does not require acquittal unless the factfinder concludes that the victim’s conduct was an unforeseeable superseding cause.
It also underscores the deferential standards governing sufficiency and great-weight challenges: appellate courts draw reasonable inferences in support of the verdict and do not reassess witness credibility merely because the parties offered competing expert opinions.