Husband and wife quarrel and wife jumped to death, what is the responsibility of the driver of the passenger jumping car?

Since the "Changsha jumping case", another jumping case has aroused heated discussions.

This time in the car, it was a couple. On September 28, 2020, a man Ermou drove a car to the Tonggunur pastoral area of Bayanhot Town, Alxa Zuoqi, Inner Mongolia, and his wife jumped from the rear door of the vehicle and died of severe head injury after landing.

The Alashan Zuoqi People's Court of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region found out that while driving the vehicle, he and his wife Chao Moumou, who was sitting on the right side of the back seat, "quarreled and argued over whether he needed to go to the pastoral area to visit his daughter", and Chao Moumou "suddenly opened the rear door of the vehicle on his own" and jumped out of the car. The court held that the defendant Qiu Moumou's negligence of "overconfidence" caused the death of a person, and his conduct constituted the crime of manslaughter. As a result, he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment, suspended for three years.

Ruan Qilin, a professor at the College of Criminal Justice at China University of Political Science and Law, told China Newsweek that for cases where passengers jump out of the car and die, not the driver of each case has to bear the penalty for the crime of manslaughter, depending on the circumstances of each jumping case, and according to the different circumstances of the case, there must be intentional and negligence to bear criminal responsibility, and for unforeseeable circumstances, it should not bear criminal responsibility.

Responsibility of the driver

In the case of Chao Moumou's jumping off, the defender of Emoumou pointed out, "After the victim suddenly jumped out of the car, the defendant was unexpected, and stopped for emergency in time and called 120 to call an ambulance to buy valuable time for saving the victim." Throughout the entire process of bringing the case to the case, the defendant never refused, evaded, or resisted, took the initiative to explain the facts of the crime, had a good attitude of admitting guilt, was a first-time offender, had no criminal record, and actively negotiated compensation matters with the victim's family and obtained understanding. ”

The defender also pointed out that although Emou caused death by negligence, there was no subjective malignancy. Chao Moumou, who has died, is seriously at fault, and she refused to visit her daughter because she wanted to eat hot pot, causing this case.

However, the court only accepted the defense opinions of Ermou turning himself in, admitting guilt, being a first-time offender, and having no criminal record, and held that "other defense opinions are inconsistent with the facts ascertained by this court and have no basis in law, and this court does not accept them". When sentencing, the court considers that the defendant reached a settlement agreement with the victim's family and obtained a written understanding, voluntarily admitted guilt and accepted punishment, and may be lenient in accordance with law.

In the end, Emou caused the death of a person due to overconfident negligence, which constituted the crime of manslaughter, and was sentenced to two years in prison and three years of probation. Emou does not need to go to prison to serve a real sentence, which the defender said will help Emou take care of the young child and repay the huge debt left by the victim as soon as possible.

This incident has sparked controversy in the public opinion field, and many people have mentioned the "Changsha jumping case" that occurred in February 2021. Also in the small space in the car, the passenger jumped out of the car, and the driver, Zhou Yangchun, was sentenced to one year in prison and one year of probation for the crime of manslaughter.

However, unlike the above case, Zhou Yangchun had a bad attitude in the transportation service due to the long waiting time for loading and the refusal of the fee-based handling service twice, and repeatedly ignored Che's objections to yaw and drove to a more remote road, causing Che to leave his seat and lean out of the window in fear, and finally fell to his death.

The court held that Zhou Yangchun had foreseen that Che might crash after discovering Che's dangerous behavior, but credulity could have been avoided, and failure to take effective measures in time led to the harmful result of Che's death. There is a criminal law causal relationship between Zhou Yangchun's negligent behavior and the result of Che's death, and his behavior has constituted the crime of manslaughter.

China Newsweek reporters searched the judgment document network with "jumping the car" and "manslaughter" and obtained more than 200 results. In cases where drivers have been convicted of manslaughter, many drivers continue to drive because the victim has asked to stop and is about to jump out of the car, but he has not stopped.

For example, in a case in Shaanxi in July 2018, the victim asked to stop three times, but the driver did not stop. When he asked to stop for the second time, the victim opened the right door and prepared to jump out of the car, but was stopped by other passengers; The third time the victim asked the driver to stop, he shouted "jump out of the car without stopping" and jumped out of the car by pulling the car door. The victim died of a head injury, and the driver committed the crime of manslaughter, and was sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for three years.

There are also cases where a passenger argues with a driver who does not ask to stop, but then jumps out of the car, and the driver is also liable. In an October 2016 case in Shandong, the driver and the passenger were boyfriend and girlfriend, and the two had an argument over the phone over trivial matters before getting into the car. In the car, the two quarreled again over the breakup, and later the passenger opened the right door of the van and jumped out of the car, and later died of severe head injury. In the August 2014 case in Guizhou, the driver and the passenger were also boyfriend and girlfriend, and the two quarreled over economic problems, and the victim opened the co-driver's door and jumped out of the car, dying of head injury. In both cases, the drivers were held criminally liable for causing death by negligence.

In the early morning of July 20, 2016, in Guangdong, there was a case in which the driver was acquitted. Taxi driver Li asked the two passengers for 51 yuan, the two questioned the high fare and refused to pay and get out of the car, Li got out of the car to block and call the police, the two passengers asked to go to the designated place, and Li drove the two back to the place of origin. On the way, the passenger Deng asked to get out of the car and opened the right rear door, was stopped by another passenger, Deng asked to get off again, but the driver Li ignored it and continued to drive, and after a while, Deng jumped from the rear glass, causing serious injuries of the second degree.

For this case, the courts of two instances held that, according to the available evidence, it was proved that the case was caused by the victim Deng's refusal to pay the fare, and Deng's injuries were also caused by his own jumping out of the window of the back seat of the car; In this case, there was no evidence to prove that defendant Li had dangerous driving or violated traffic laws, defendant Li was not subjectively negligent, objectively did not carry out acts that directly caused injury to the victim, and there was no criminal law causal relationship between his driving behavior and Deng's injury results, so the original public prosecution charged Li with the crime of causing serious injury by negligence and found Li not guilty.

Why is Li not guilty? Wan Miaoyan, director of Sichuan Dingshi Law Firm, told China Newsweek that she noticed that in Li's case, in addition to the driver and the passenger who jumped out of the car, there was a third witness at the scene, which may have enabled the case-handling authorities to obtain more evidence and confirm that they did not foresee the passenger's behavior of jumping off the bus, so they were not responsible.

Crimes of negligence and omission

Shi Yanan, director of the Criminal Law Research Center at Chinese Minmin University, told China Newsweek that most cases in which drivers bear criminal responsibility after passengers jump off the bus are crimes of omission.

What is the crime of omission? Shi Yan'an pointed out that several elements should be considered. First of all, the inactive person must have an obligation to act, and at the same time the victim or the damaged property interests are in a dangerous state, and this dangerous state is within the control of the inacter; Second, inaction has the ability to prevent danger from turning into harm; Third, the harmful result is causally related to the breach of the obligation of action by the o-actor and can be attributed to the o-actor; Finally, the inaction is intentional or negligent.

In response to the jumping case, he analyzed that first of all, it is necessary to judge whether the driver has an obligation to act, that is, whether there is an obligation to prevent the dangerous behavior of passengers getting off the car abnormally, generally speaking, the driver has this obligation, especially the driver engaged in passenger transport; Secondly, it is necessary to judge whether the driver has the ability to stop, if the driver finds that there is a danger of passengers jumping and stops in time, there will be no jumping behavior, indicating that the driver has the ability to prevent passengers from jumping in time.

Of course, there are also cases where the driver is not capable of stopping it. Shi Yan'an said, for example, when the driver is driving, the passenger opens the door without warning, or the driver jumps out of the car without waiting for the driver to stop during the parking process, it can be considered that the driver was unable to prevent the result from happening at that time. In addition, in the case of multiple causes and effects, it is also necessary to consider whether the harmful result can be attributed to the driver. "Simply put, it's the question of whether it's reasonable for the driver to bear the burden." Shi Yan'an said that if a passenger interferes with the driver first, and the passenger jumps when the driver is focused on controlling the normal operation of the vehicle, the result of the injury cannot be borne by the driver.

In the case of jumping out of the car, Wan Miaoyan believed that objectively speaking, the husband of the driver, E, did not carry out other crimes such as forcibly pushing the victim out of the car, and the quarrel between the two in the car could not be regarded as a harmful act, so the result of the victim's death should not be attributed to the driver's actions from an objective level, but can only be regarded as caused by the victim's own risk.

However, from the perspective of the protection obligation of the object of legal interests, Wan Miaoyan believes that as a driver, Emoumou has a protection obligation based on the specific field of "driver-passenger" for his wife as a passenger, "Emou is the temporary manager of the specific field of the car, he has an exclusive dominance over the dangers arising from high-speed driving in this specific field, and the driver and the passenger form a substantial dependency, in layman's terms, Emou controls the fate of Chao Moumou." Therefore, she believes that whether it is from the perspective of Emou's ability to perform or from the causal relationship of rescue or not, Eso-and-so has an act of inaction.

From the point of view of intention, the criminal law mainly divides criminal acts into two categories: intentional crimes and negligent crimes, and negligent crimes are specifically divided into negligent negligence and overconfident negligence, Wan Miaoyan said, "It is negligent negligence to foresee but not foresee, and it is overconfident negligence to have foreseen but credulously believe oneself." ”

However, from a subjective point of view, Wan Miaoyan believes that there is ambiguity in the Emou case, because the difference between overconfident negligence and unexpected events mainly lies in "whether there is a foreseeable possibility", and in this case, neither the indictment of the procuratorate nor the judgment of the court specified in detail what happened in the car before the deceased jumped out of the car, whether the deceased expressed his intention to jump to such and such or had the intention to jump the car, and the judgment only described this process as "jumping from the rear door of the vehicle suddenly opened by himself , If only based on this vague fact, it is impossible to judge whether the defendant was able to foresee the possibility of the deceased jumping out of the car.

Nguyen Qilin shares the same view. He believes that the Chao so-and-so jumping case occurred in a confined space with only two people, and it is impossible to accurately judge what happened in the car before his wife jumped out of the car. He analyzed that "the wife jumped out of the car because she wanted to eat hot pot and did not go to see her daughter" is not reasonable, but the wife's mental behavior before jumping out of the car has been "dead without proof", which is why the local court in Inner Mongolia did not finally determine the "eating hot pot" plot mentioned by the defender.

Wan Miaoyan also mentioned that if there is evidence that the wife is indeed unwilling to visit her three-year-old daughter because she wants to eat hot pot, it is a disregard for minors' infringement, violating the child's right to be cared for by his parents, and can be found to be at fault.

Published in the 1080th issue of China Newsweek magazine on February 20, 2023

Magazine title: What is the responsibility of the driver in the jumping case?

Reporter: Yuan Suwen Intern: Wang Diya