New York University Review of Law and Social Change
1990/1991
Challenging the Death Penalty: A Colloquium
Part Two
INEVITABLE ERROR: WRONGFUL NEW YORK STATE HOMICIDE CONVICTIONS, 1965-1988
by Marty I. Rosenbaum

Excerpt

Daniel P. Boutin was convicted of two counts of criminally negligent homicide in Saratoga County on February 5, 1987. While driving his truck on the Adirondack Northway in Saratoga County, Boutin collided with a police car that had stopped in the right hand roadway behind a disabled tractor trailer. The police car’s lights were flashing, but visibility was low due to fog and rain. Both the state trooper and the driver of the disabled truck, who were seated inside the police vehicle, were killed. The Appellate Division affirmed the conviction,1 but the Court of Appeals reversed, holding thatthe evidence does not show that defendant was engaged in any criminally culpable risk-creating conduct.... Rather, it establishes only that defendant inexplicably failed to see the vehicle until he was so close that he could not prevent the collision.... [T]hat unexplained failure, without more, does not constitute criminally negligent homicide.2

Footnotes

1. People v. Boutin, 146 A.D.2d 872, 536 N.Y.S.2d 583 (3d Dep’t 1989) (mem.), rev’d, 75 N.Y.2d 692, 555 N.E.2d 253, 556 N.Y.S.2d 1 (1990).
 
2. People v. Boutin, 75 N.Y.2d 692, 697-98, 555 N.E.2d 253, 255-56, 556 N.Y.S.2d 1, 3-4 (1990); see also Albany Times-Union, Apr. 6, 1990, at B1.