UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Cleveland SHORTMAN, Defendant-Appellant

ORDER

The memorandum disposition filed on June 26,1996, is redesignated as an authored opinion by Judge Hall.

OPINION

Cleveland Shortman appeals his conviction of involuntary manslaughter that arose from an automobile accident on a Navajo reservation. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 1112 , 1158. Because we find that the district court erred in instructing the jury on the negligence element of this crime, we reverse Shortman’s conviction.

I

On the evening of Friday, March 5, 1993, Cleveland Shortman, a Navajo Indian, drove his 1970 Ford pickup truck to the Windy Mesa Bar in Page, Arizona. He drank. When he left the Mesa Bar he brought Katherine Yellowman and another man along as passengers in his truck.

Shortman’s truck malfunctioned repeatedly while they drove around that night. Yellow-man testified that the hood kept flipping up, obscuring Shortman’s view of the road. She also testified that the truck stalled a few times, and that Shortman had to fiddle with wires under the dashboard to restart it. Eventually, Yellowman got out of the car and walked home. When she last saw Shortman, he had pulled his truck into the southbound lane of traffic, which was the wrong lane of a two-lane road,…