Sufficiency of the evidence; Identity; People v Yost; Proving identity with circumstantial evidence; People v Xun Wang

The court held that the evidence was sufficient to support that defendant was the driver of the vehicle involved in the accident at issue. She was convicted of operating a motor vehicle under the influence causing serious injury, operating a motor vehicle with a suspended license, moving violation causing death or serious impairment of bodily function, and lying to a police officer after a crash in which she claimed she was not the driver. On appeal, the court rejected defendant’s argument that there was insufficient evidence to support that she was operating the vehicle when it crashed. She correctly noted that her girlfriend, M, “admitted to driving the car at first, meaning there was confusion as to who was driving.” But she overlooked “the fact that she later admitted to police that” M was not the driver. “This, in addition to the video evidence showing [M] as a pedestrian when the crash occurred, was enough for a rational trier of fact to find that [M] was not the driver, resolving any possible confusion in this respect.” In addition, “[v]iewing the evidence in a light most favorable to the prosecution, a rational trier of fact could have found that there was no one seated in the passenger seat at the time of the crash.” Finally, the jury “weighed the evidence and found there was no third party who may have been the driver, and ‘it is simply not the task of an appellate court to adopt inferences that the jury has spurned.’” Affirmed.