## Facts

- A California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer attempted to stop Claude Alex Schmies, who was riding a motorcycle on Interstate 5.
- Schmies accelerated to high speed, briefly slowed, looked back, then sped up after the officer activated emergency lights.
- Two CHP officers pursued with lights and sirens; the chase continued at high speeds and through heavier traffic.
- During the pursuit, one pursuing patrol car collided with a civilian vehicle at an intersection, killing the civilian driver and injuring the officer.
- The prosecution argued Schmies’s willful, dangerous flight proximately caused the collision and resulting death and injury.
- The defense argued the officers’ allegedly unreasonable pursuit tactics and alleged noncompliance with CHP pursuit policies constituted an intervening, superseding cause.
- The trial court limited defense evidence and expert testimony offered to evaluate the “reasonableness” of the officers’ pursuit and compliance with internal policies.
- A jury acquitted Schmies of second-degree murder but convicted him of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and reckless driving causing great bodily injury; the court imposed an aggregate prison term.

## Issues

1. Whether the trial court erred by limiting or excluding evidence (including expert testimony) about the reasonableness of the officers’ pursuit conduct and compliance with CHP pursuit policies when offered to show a superseding cause.
2. Whether, in a prosecution arising from a police chase, the pursuing officer’s allegedly negligent or unreasonable driving can constitute a superseding cause that relieves the fleeing motorist of criminal liability.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal affirmed the convictions for vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and reckless driving causing great bodily injury.
- The court held the trial court acted within its discretion in limiting evidence about the reasonableness of the officers’ pursuit and CHP policy compliance when offered to prove superseding causation.
- The court held the pursuit, even if arguably negligent, was a foreseeable response to Schmies’s high-speed flight and did not break the chain of proximate causation on these facts.
- The court struck the order requiring reimbursement for appointed-counsel costs due to noncompliance with statutory prerequisites; otherwise, it affirmed the judgment and sentence.

## Legal Principles

- Criminal proximate cause is satisfied where the defendant’s conduct is a substantial factor in producing the harm and the result is a foreseeable consequence of that conduct.
- An intervening act relieves a defendant of liability only if it is so unusual, extraordinary, or abnormal that it constitutes a superseding cause.
- Police pursuit is generally a foreseeable, dependent response to a suspect’s willful, dangerous flight; collision risks to third parties during such pursuit are foreseeable consequences.
- Evidence that pursuing officers may have been negligent, or that they may have violated internal pursuit policies, does not by itself establish a superseding cause in criminal causation analysis.
- Trial courts may exclude or limit pursuit-policy and “reasonableness” evidence where its probative value on superseding causation is limited and it risks confusing the causation inquiry.

## Conclusion

The court held that a fleeing motorist may be criminally liable for a third party’s death caused by a pursuing officer’s collision because pursuit and its attendant risks are foreseeable consequences of reckless flight; officer negligence and internal policy violations did not, on these facts, constitute a superseding cause, though the counsel-fee reimbursement order was stricken for procedural noncompliance.


People v. Schmies, 44 Cal. App. 4th 38, 51 Cal. Rptr. 2d 185 (Cal. Ct. App. 1996)