Murder Convictions Upheld in 3 Impaired Driving Cases

The convictions of the drivers, Martin Heidgen, Franklin McPherson and Taliyah Taylor, hinged on prosecutors’ contention they acted with “depraved indifference to human life” in crashes with common threads: driving too fast in the wrong lane while under the influence.

Mr. Heidgen drove his pickup truck for miles the wrong way on the Meadowbrook State Parkway in 2005 and hit a limousine, killing the driver, Stanley Rabinowitz, and a 7-year-old passenger, Katie Flynn, and injuring five others.

Mr. McPherson hit a vehicle on another Long Island parkway in 2007, killing a driver, Leslie Burgess. Ms. Taylor sped naked down Staten Island’s Forest Avenue in 2006 and killed a pedestrian, Larry Simon.

“Although intoxicated driving cases that present circumstances evincing a depraved indifference to human life are likely to be few and far between,” Jonathan Lippman, the chief judge of the Court of Appeals, wrote, “we find that the evidence in each of these unusually egregious cases was legally sufficient to support the convictions.”

In a dissent, Judge Robert Smith said the drivers were “unforgivably reckless,” unquestionably guilty of manslaughter and under a recent state statute also guilty of aggravated vehicular homicide. However, Judge Smith said, unless the defendants knew they were driving the wrong way, they were not guilty of murder, and he said he could not see how a rational jury could find beyond a reasonable doubt that they did know. The blood tests proved Mr. Heidgen and Mr. McPherson were “very drunk,” the judge said, and Ms. Taylor’s behavior showed that after taking ecstasy, smoking marijuana and drinking a beer, she was “obviously mentally impaired.”