Court upholds murder verdict in DUI crash that killed girl

A drug-impaired driver, charged with murder for killing a 2-year-old girl in a crash, wanted jurors at his second trial to learn that he had already been convicted of vehicular manslaughter in his first trial, so they wouldn’t think he’d be set free if acquitted of murder.

A Los Angeles County judge refused the proposed instruction, and Marvin Hicks was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 22 years to life in prison. On Thursday, the state Supreme Court upheld the verdict in a 6-1 ruling and said it was justified for a driver who “acted with complete disregard for human life.”

The case required the court to weigh two delicate issues: how to discourage jurors who are weighing guilt and innocence from considering the punishment the defendant faces, which is supposed to be irrelevant to their verdict; and what evidence is needed to convict an intoxicated driver of knowingly committing a life-threatening act that can be charged as murder.

Hicks, 45, of Palmdale (Los Angeles County), was high on marijuana and PCP when he was

pulled over by sheriff ’s deputies in the town of Lancaster in December 2012. After giving what a deputy described as a “blank stare,” he sped away, ran a red light and, while driving at least 70 mph with officers in pursuit, smashed into another car at an intersection, killing Madison Ruano and seriously injuring the girl’s mother, Tina Ruano.

Hicks had previous convictions for reckless driving and driving while intoxicated and had attended DUI education programs as part of his sentences. He testified that he had known he was doing when he started driving, and officers said he was alert and coherent after the crash. Officers also testified, however, that Hicks was hanging out the window and screaming incoherently when he was first stopped.

Jurors at his first trial convicted him of gross vehicular manslaughter, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, but deadlocked on second-degree murder, which required proof of a conscious disregard for human life. He was convicted of murder at a retrial in October 2014 after the judge denied a defense request to tell jurors about the manslaughter conviction.

In Thursday’s ruling, Justice Ming Chin said informing jurors about the earlier verdict would have kept them from wrongly assuming that an acquittal would let Hicks escape punishment, but could also have unfairly harmed the prosecution by leading jurors to question why he was being retried.

Judges can strike a proper balance in future cases by telling the jury not to consider punishment or to speculate about any previous trials, Chin said. But in this case, he said, such an instruction would not have changed the outcome, because the evidence showed that Hicks was “in an alert state of mind” before the fatal crash.

In dissent, Justice Goodwin Liu disagreed with the majority’s view of the evidence and said the second jury probably would have acquitted Hicks of murder, or deadlocked, if it had been told of his manslaughter conviction.

Omitting that information “may have led that jury to believe it faced an all-or-nothing choice” and unfairly hampered the defense, Liu said.

The case is People vs. Hicks, S232218.