Opinion
SC 163678 COA 358154
11-22-2023
PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. DOUGLAS GERARD AUGUSTYNIAK, Defendant-Appellant.
Van Buren CC: 2021-022848-FH
Elizabeth T. Clement, Chief Justice Brian K. Zahra David F. Viviano Richard H. Bernstein Megan K. Cavanagh Elizabeth M. Welch Kyra H. Bolden, Justices
ORDER
By order of June 15, 2022, the application for leave to appeal the September 22, 2021 order of the Court of Appeals was held in abeyance pending the decision in People v Welch (Docket No. 163833). On order of the Court, leave to appeal having been denied in Welch on June 23, 2023, 511 Mich. 1010 (2023), the application is again considered, and it is DENIED, because we are not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this Court.
WELCH, J. (dissenting).
I respectfully dissent from the Court's order denying leave to appeal. I would have instead remanded this case to the Court of Appeals for consideration as on leave granted. Defendant was bound over for trial on allegations that he violated MCL 257.625(4) and (8) by operating a vehicle with a controlled substance in his body and causing the deaths of two other people. There is no doubt that while defendant was not observed to be intoxicated at the time of the crash, later blood testing revealed 7 nanograms per milliliter of active cocaine alkaloids and 937 nanograms per milliliter of benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine, in defendant's system. While defendant argues that this was due to consuming a tea shortly before the crash, which he allegedly did not know contained coca leaves, I agree with the lower courts that there was sufficient evidence presented to establish probable cause that defendant had knowingly consumed a controlled substance.
However, I believe defendant has articulated potentially meritorious arguments that the district and circuit courts misapplied People v Schaefer, 473 Mich. 418 (2005), and People v Feezel, 486 Mich. 184 (2010), in holding that the decedent driver's actions of rolling through a stop sign, coming to a stop in defendant's lane of traffic in which defendant had the right of way, and then accelerating a split second later into the lane that defendant had swerved into to avoid a collision cannot be considered an intervening superseding cause as a matter of law. These events occurred in less than five seconds. The prosecution's accident reconstruction expert, who testified at the preliminary examination hearing, opined that defendant was not traveling at an excessive speed at the time of the collision, that defendant took the correct evasive action by swerving into the empty oncoming lane to avoid the decedents' vehicle, and that the decedent driver's failure to yield was the cause of the collision. The district court also observed that defendant "had a split second to decide, do I swerve into the oncoming lane. He's trying to decide what this drivers [sic] gonna do, he has no way of really knowing what they were going to do." Defendant has argued that the conduct of the decedent driver was not reasonably foreseeable and that the crash and deaths were not a natural and foreseeable consequence of defendant's operation of a motor vehicle under the circumstances. See Schaefer, 473 Mich. at 436-438, 445.
On this record, I believe it would be prudent to direct the Court of Appeals to resolve defendant's legal arguments before he stands trial.
I, Larry S. Royster, Clerk of the Michigan Supreme Court, certify that the foregoing is a true and complete copy of the order entered at the direction of the Court.