Wyoming Vehicular Homicide Defense Attorney

Vehicular Homicide Charges in Wyoming: What You Are Facing

In Wyoming, a person can be charged with vehicular homicide if they die in a car accident where the driver is said to have been acting carelessly, under the influence, or in a way that shows they don’t care about the safety of others. These are some of the hardest cases a person can go through. Everyone involved is usually really sad, the media pays a lot of attention to them in small Wyoming towns, and prosecutors are under a lot of pressure to file serious charges. It’s important to have trial lawyers who know both the law and the people involved in these cases.

How Wyoming Law Defines Vehicular Homicide

Wyoming’s aggravated homicide by vehicle law (Wyo. Stat. § 6-2-106) and its DWUI manslaughter laws are the main ways the state deals with deaths caused by driving. When someone kills another person while driving in willful or wanton disregard for the safety of people or property, or while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, they are guilty of aggravated homicide by vehicle. The crime is a felony that could land you in prison for up to twenty years. If someone dies as a result of driving in violation of a traffic law without the aggravated mental state, they can be charged with homicide by vehicle, which carries a maximum sentence of one year in jail.

The Role of Accident Reconstruction in These Cases

Physical evidence from the scene of the accident, such as skid marks, damage to the vehicles, road conditions, witness accounts, and expert accident reconstruction analysis, is very important in vehicular homicide cases. The prosecution will hire an accident reconstruction expert to support their account of what happened and why. We hire our own independent reconstruction experts to challenge the prosecution’s findings, propose alternative explanations for the accident, and present all the physical evidence to the jury. These disagreements between experts are often the main point of the trial.

DUI-Related Vehicular Homicide in Wyoming

When someone dies in a car accident, and there are claims that they were under the influence of drugs or alcohol, the prosecution has more forensic evidence to use, such as blood alcohol levels, toxicology results, and observations from field sobriety tests. We look at all of this evidence with the same care we use for separate DUI cases: Was the blood draw legal? Did the testing go well, and was it written down correctly? Is the toxicology result consistent with impairment at the time of the accident, or was the blood drawn hours later when levels had changed? These are very important defense questions that need both legal and scientific knowledge.

Facing a Vehicular Homicide Charge While Grieving

Many of the people who hire us for vehicular homicide cases are still dealing with the trauma of the accident, and sometimes they’re also grieving if the person who died was someone they loved. It’s really hard to go through the legal process while dealing with these feelings. That’s why we handle these cases with both the tough legal defense our clients need and the understanding that only a human can give. Call Just Criminal Law right away. The sooner we get involved, the more we can do to protect your rights and affect the outcome of your case.