People v. Miller

Appellant Vicki Lynn Miller was charged and convicted of multiple counts, including hit-and-run driving, assault with a deadly weapon, evading a peace officer and driving with a suspended license. The charges derived from a series of incidents on February 2, 2006, in which she (1) left the scene of an accident without exchanging information with the other driver; (2) drove her car on a beach bicycle path, colliding with and seriously injuring a pedestrian; and (3) ignored the fire department employee who was following her in an attempt to pull her over. On appeal, she contends that the trial court improperly instructed the jury on the elements of assault, and that the evidence was insufficient to support a finding that the person from whom she fled met the statutory definition of peace officer. In a supplemental brief, she points out that the trial court failed to conduct a court trial on the allegation that she suffered a prior conviction for driving with a suspended license, but nonetheless imposed a sentence dependent on the truth of the allegation. We agree with her contentions concerning instructional error and sufficiency of the evidence and agree that the sentence…