Colorado Court of Appeals People v.Arzabala 10CA0651

Decision here.

   Arzabala was an HTO who was driving drunk (or at least whilst drinking), and who was involved in an accident after another driver made a u-turn in front of him.  There was some dispute as to whether the other drive caused the accident by turning in front of him, or he did by driving twice the speed limit.  Either way, a couple of people in the accident suffered SBI, but Arzabala was not injured.  He never gave his info to the police who were investigating the accident (he says he did, the police say he didn't, the jury believed the police).  Arzabala hitched a ride in an ambulance with one of his injured passengers, but while it was on the way to the hospital he jumped out and ran away.

   Eventually, he was arrested anyway.  He was charged with a couple counts of leaving the scene of an accident (one count for each victim that suffered SBI), and with DUI, reckless driving, aggravated driving under revocation (the HTO charge... a couple of counts of that.  One for HTO driving while drunk, one for HTO hit and run).  Also vehicular assault, giving alcohol to minors, might have been some other stuff.

   Anyway, he was acquitted of the DUI but he was convicted of two counts of vehicular assault (under the reckless driving subsection), giving alcohol to kids, both counts of hit and run, and one count of Agg DUR.  He appealed his conviction on several grounds.  He argued insufficiency of evidence, prosecutorial misconduct, bad jury instructions, and a few other trial related grounds that aren't really important to this blog.  None of it worked, anyway, and most of his convictions stand.  He also argued that the two counts of hit and run were double jeopardy.

   The court of appeals held that leaving the scene of an accident is charged per accident rather than per victim.  In other words, if you leave one accident, it doesn't matter if there are one or twenty victims left behind, it's still just one count of hit and run.  This logic doesn't apply to all charges (the vehicular assault, for example, is charged per victim and not per accident), but the court ordered that Arzabala's two hit and run convictions be merged into one.