Too Drunk to Care

The Defendant spent an evening drinking heavily with companions and moving between bars, carrying a loaded pistol. As the night wore on he grew belligerent. During one confrontation he fired his gun, wounding a man; at another point he shot a second man in the stomach. Later, in a crowded bar and without any apparent provocation, he shot and killed an acquaintance, Marvin Lindsey. The Defendant was charged with intentional murder, with depraved indifference murder — that is, recklessly engaging in conduct that created a grave risk of death and showed a depraved indifference to human life — and with assaults on the men he wounded. At trial he sought to rely on his heavy intoxication. The Court allowed the jury to consider his drunkenness on the intentional-murder count but refused to let it consider intoxication on the depraved-indifference count. The jury acquitted him of intentional murder but convicted him of depraved indifference murder. The question was whether a Defendant’s voluntary intoxication may be used to negate the recklessness required for depraved indifference murder.