State v. Monahan

by
The Supreme Court affirmed Defendant’s convictions for homicide by intoxicated use of a motor vehicle, homicide by intoxicated use of a vehicle and homicide by negligent operation of a vehicle, holding that the erroneous exclusion of data from a portable GPS unit was harmless.Defendant was involved in a single-vehicle crash in which Defendant was seriously injured and his girlfriend, R.C., was killed. The only factual dispute at trial was whether it was Defendant or R.C. who was driving at the time of the crash. R.C. owned a portable GPS unit that she kept in the vehicle, from which officers recreated the vehicle’s movements and calculated its speed on the date of the accident. Defendant moved for the admission of GPS data before the accident to show that R.C. was likely driving the vehicle at the time of the accident. The circuit court excluded the GPS data. The court of appeals accepted for purposes of appeal that the circuit court’s exclusion of the GPS data was erroneous but that the error was harmless. The Supreme Court affirmed. View "State v. Monahan" on Justia Law