176 Wis. 490 | Wis. | 1922
Defendant claims (1) that the conviction was contrary to the evidence, and (2) that the statute is too vague and uncertain to sustain a conviction, in that it does not define any offense with sufficient certainty to enable a jury to determine whether or not there has been a violation of the statute or to enable the driver of a car to tell when he violates it.
An examination of the evidence shows that the defendant was driving a heavy Packard car down a steep hill on a slight curve at a speed of about from twenty to twenty-five miles an hour; that the complainant was ahead of him driving a small car at -a somewhat slower speed; that just as he had partly turned out to pass complainant he noticed another car coming in the opposite direction, so he used both brakes at once to slow up. In doing so his car slewed around and skidded into complainant’s car. The road had been freshly oiled and was slippery and the hind end of defendant’s car struck the end of complainant’s car, which ran down the road several hundred feet, then up a three-foot embankment against a stone. It was in high gear till it struck the stone, when complainant turned it into neutral. Defendant’s car turned over in the ditch. Defendant knew the road was oiled and slippery and he drove down the hill with the right wheels of his car on the gravel outside the oiled part. He also knew that in order to pass complainant he must turn onto the oiled road and that, too, at a curve. In view of this fact we deem there was a warrant for the conclusion of the trial court that defendant was driving his car at a speed in excess of that contemplated by the statute. A steep down grade, a curve therein, and an oiled road all spell care and a slow speed. The tendency of a car to skid under such circumstances is well known and the speed should be such as to reduce that tendency to one as much within the margin of safety as possible.’ A, speed of from twenty to twenty-five miles an hour under such circumstances may well be found to be reckless. Raymond v. Sauk Co. 167 Wis. 125, 166 N. W. 29.
If the fact that one jury might decide a case one way and another jury a different way upon the same state of facts rendered laws void for uncertainty, then we would have to discard not only many rules of civil law but also many criminal laws. In nearly every criminal act an intent to commit it must be found in order to warrant a conviction. Not only may such intent be found upon circumstantial evidence, but the direct evidence may well give rise to a situation where one jury will find the intent and another fail to find it. So, too, in many cases where guilty knowledge is required to be found, as in receiving stolen goods or in running a house of ill fame, juries may come to different conclusions upon the same state of facts. Even in murder of the second degree the definition of the crime is no more specific and certain than is that of the offense in the statute under consideration. It provides that the killing of a human being without intent to kill, “when perpetrated by any act imminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, regardless of human life,” shall be murder in the second degree. What is an act imminently dangerous to others, and what evinces a depraved mind regardless of human life, is as much a matter of judgment as is such reckless driving as will, under the circumstances, endanger the property, life, or limb of any person. Thus by sec.
By the Court. — Judgment affirmed.