Opinion by
This is an appeal from the lower court’s denial of motions in arrest of judgment or for a new trial in an involuntary manslaughter case raising primarily the question of whether the trial court erred in permitting a witness to testify as to the defendant’s manner of driving prior to a violent rear-end collision between defendant’s car and the car of the deceased, Alvin Wilkins. The defendant, Nathaniel Honeycutt, was tried and convicted by a jury of involuntary manslaughter. The defendant’s theory is that the testimony of a Mrs. Wright was irrelevant because her observations of his operation of his vehicle related to a distance too remote from the scene of the accident to have sufficient probative value to outweigh the prejudice created in the minds of the jury.
The particular facts of this case are as follows: At approximately 2:00 a.m. on December 19, 1971, Mrs. Wright was returning from her mother’s house on U. S. Route 1, a four-lane divided highway which runs east-west in a rural area of Delaware County. While traveling in an easterly direction at approximately 55 m.p.h., the speed limit on this highway, she was passing an automobile when two cars came upon her very quickly and “tailgated” her vehicle until she was far enough beyond the car she had passed to safely return to the right lane. One of these cars was driven by the defendant Honeycutt and the other by an Eric Barren. At *268 this point both of these vehicles which had been pressing her from behind sped past her at a speed she estimated to be 70 m.p.h. and increasing. As soon as the second car passed her it cut sharply back into the right lane. It was this second car which Honeycutt was driving. 1 The Honeycutt and Barren cars continued up the highway side by side accelerating all the while. In seconds they were out of sight. All of this took place one to one and one-half miles west of the scene of the fatal accident in which the deceased, Mr. Wilkins, also driving his vehicle in an easterly direction, was killed.
Moments later, when Mrs. Wright came upon the scene, dust was still in the air on the curve on which the collision occurred. Although she did not see the deceased’s vehicle, she did see the two vehicles which had passed her and which, as a result of the accident, were now facing in the opposite westerly direction. After stopping and ascertaining that no one was injured in the Honeycutt and Barren cars, Mrs. Wright left the scene and contacted the state police. Neither Honey- *269 cutt nor Barren nor any of their passengers apprised Mrs. Wright of the fact that the Wilkins car had also been involved in the accident.
The police soon arrived and found the deceased’s car approximately 130 feet west of Honeycutt’s vehicle and impacted on a guard rail. They discovered the deceased underneath the car with his arm wedged between the drive shaft and the frame. The death was caused by massive internal injuries which were attended by numerous and severe lacerations and abrasions, most of which apparently occurred when the victim was thrown from and dragged by Ms car. While the ignition switch was in the “on” position, the engine was no longer running, and most of the damage to the car was done to the left rear and left side. The victim’s car had also been turned 180° by the collision. On the other hand, Honeycutt’s vehicle was primarily damaged in the right front. Paint samples taken from both cars demonstrated that they had indeed collided. Although the Barren car did not collide with either the Honeycutt or Wilkins car, it had jumped the medial strip and spun out of control at the point of impact of the other two vehicles, about 85 feet from the place where the victim’s car finally stopped, and some 195 feet from where Honeycutt’s car came to rest.
The police testified that when they arrived at the scene the occupants of the Honeycutt and Barren vehicles were laughing and joking. Honeycutt first told the police that he had been coming from the east, although he recanted when the police showed him that Ms front bumper was lodged on the guard rail 40 feet west of his car. In a subsequent written statement he stated that it was raining and that he had lost control of the car and hit the guard rail. The police testified that there had been no rain in the area and that the roads were dry.
*270 Honeycutt now argues that the trial court erred in not excluding Mrs. Wright’s testimony, and therefore erred in denying the appellant’s post-trial motions in arrest of judgment or for a new trial. We disagree.
It has long been the law that the question of relevance of proffered evidence rests first and foremost in the sound discretion of the trial judge.
Thompson v. American Steel & Wire Co.,
First, the Commonwealth did not seek merely to prove speed, rather it sought to demonstrate that the
manner
in which the appellant drove was reckless. Of course, while circumstantial evidence may only be minimally relevant with regard to one issue, the same evidence may be highly relevant to prove another. Thus, contrary to the usually strict limitation of evidence of prior speed when offered only to show speed at the time of the collision, it has been said that, “where recklessness, wantonness, or wilfulness is an issue it is frequently necessary, or desirable in order to establish a strong case, to show not only an indifference to consequences at the instant an accident occurred, but also that such a state of mind persisted for several min,-
*271
utes prior to the accident. Where evidence is offered for this purpose the court may admit testimony that the party was driving at a high and dangerous rate of speed at a relatively remote point.” Annot.,
Second, the Commonwealth did offer evidence which circumstantially corroborated the testimony of Mrs. Wright through slides taken the day after the accident and the testimony of the state police officers who arrived at the scene, which recreated the accident scene for the jury. There is no requirement that the corrobor
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ative evidence be only that of an eyewitness. All tbe facts point unequivocally to reckless conduct by the defendant Honeycutt, and thus fortify that inference which the Commonwealth hoped the jury would also draw from Mrs. Wright’s testimony. There is no reason for the court and jury to ignore the “geographical physics” of the accident which compel the conclusion that Honeycutt was racing with the Barren vehicle at the time the accident occurred, when intelligent and prudent persons would certainly recognize its significance:
Mitchell v. Stolze,
The combined weight of the evidence was clearly sufficient to warrant the jury’s returning a verdict of guilty of involuntary manslaughter. In Pennsylvania a defendant may be convicted for involuntary manslaughter when his racing with another vehicle was
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the proximate cause of a fatal accident:
Commonwealth v. Looser,
Lastly, defendant Honeycutt contends that he is entitled to a new trial because the trial court committed a prejudicial error during its charge to the jury. The particular error cited occurred when the court, in summarizing the evidence for the jury, said: “You have speeding or racing, taking the Commonwealth’s evidence,
which you have to believe of course,
but you have evidence of speeding or racing a mile to a mile and a half away; you have evidence of an impact on a bad curve.” This misstatement, if it occurred at all,
2
was not objected to by the defense counsel, as required by Pa. R. Crim. P. 1119(b); and therefore, to be cognizable on appeal, the error must be so basic and fundamental that it “affects the merits or justice of the ease, or, as some cases express it, offends against the fundamentals of a fair and impartial trial. . . .”
Commonwealth v. Jennings,
It should first be noted that the charge on this point was clearly erroneous, as the credibility of all the witnesses is for the jury, and no witness need be believed even if not cross-examined or otherwise contradicted:
Commonwealth v. Chermansky,
Since the Court fully instructed the jury on the issue of the credibility of the witnesses, this unfortu
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nate slip of the tongue, which would have been promptly corrected if brought to the court’s attention, was not so basic or fundamental an error to require a reversal of the judgment of the lower court. “Since the jury . . . was instructed to carefully weigh and assess the credibility of all the witnesses, no error, fundamental in dimension can be said to have been wrought. ... We will not allow defense counsel to sit quietly by and thereafter on appeal take advantage of what was a correctable trial omission.”
Commonwealth v.
Glover,
Judgment of sentence affirmed.
Notes
This was not Mrs. Wright’s only encounter with Honeycutt that dark morning. Approximately one quarter of a mile before the cars passed her, Mrs. Wright had stopped on a small country road, which intersects Route 1, waiting to safely turn onto the highway when both ears came up very quickly behind her. One of the vehicles came extremely close to her rear bumper. Mrs. Wright had given this testimony at a preliminary hearing and was about to reiterate when defense counsel requested an offer of proof. Thereafter the trial court ruled that the testimony involving the stop sign incident was too remote to be admissible, but the court did allow the testimony regarding the appellant’s passing her, over the objection of defense counsel. While we need not discuss the propriety of the trial court's exclusionary ruling concerning the first encounter, we do note that such testimony would have served to show that Mr. Honeycutt’s reckless driving and state of mind did exist for a considerable period of time, rather than only momentarily while he was overtaking Mrs. Wright
It seemed more likely to us that the reporter erred in either the recordation or the transcription of this charge. From reading the entire charge, it is more likely that the lower court said, “which you [do not] have to believe of course.” This is also apparent from a common sense reading of the questioned phrase itself. However, we are unable to ascertain whether this suspicion is true because the original stenographic record has been destroyed. Also, at another point during the court’s lengthy charge to the jury, the court misread one word of the involuntary manslaughter statute, but counsel for both the Commonwealth and the appellant brought the oversight to the court’s attention, and it was promptly corrected.