Manslaughter usually asks what was in the driver’s head. This one asks only what was in his blood.
Texas defines the offense in a single sentence. A person commits intoxication manslaughter if he operates a motor vehicle in a public place, is intoxicated, and by reason of that intoxication causes the death of another by accident or mistake. Read the last four words again. By accident or mistake. The statute does not ask whether the driver meant to hurt anyone. It assumes he did not. The decision the law punishes was made earlier, when he chose to drive in that condition, and everything after that is treated as the foreseeable result of the choice. It is a second-degree felony, two to twenty years.
Intoxicated means one of two things, and the State needs only one. An alcohol concentration of 0.08 or more, which is a number from a lab. Or the loss of the normal use of mental or physical faculties from alcohol, a drug, or any combination, which is a description from an officer, a witness, or a video. The number is the easier proof, which is why the blood draw matters so much and why the entry before this one is about no-refusal warrants.
Now the civil side, which is where the families end up. Texas caps exemplary damages, the punishment portion of a verdict, in most injury cases. It lifts the cap when the conduct the plaintiff sues over is a felony from a short list in the Civil Practice and Remedies Code. Intoxication manslaughter is on that list, and so is intoxication assault, and for those two the statute does not even require that the conduct be committed knowingly or intentionally. A jury that finds the driver’s intoxication caused the death is not limited by the cap. That is the single largest consequence of this charge outside a prison sentence, and most people who call about a drunk-driving death have never heard of it.
The conviction itself can come into the civil case. Texas Rule of Evidence 803(22) lets a final felony judgment, entered after a trial or a guilty plea, be offered in a civil case to prove any fact essential to that judgment, once no appeal is pending. A guilty plea is also an admission the civil jury can hear. An acquittal, on the other hand, proves very little, because the criminal jury had to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt and the civil jury only has to be convinced it is more likely than not.
That difference is why the civil case does not wait. The criminal case runs on the State’s schedule, toward the State’s question, which is punishment. The civil case has its own clock, two years from the death for the wrongful death and survival claims, and its own evidence to preserve: the blood result, the bar receipts and video if the driver was served somewhere, the vehicle’s data, the witnesses before their memories fade. If the driver was overserved while already obviously intoxicated, the Dram Shop Act can put the bar in the case as well, and the bar, unlike most drivers, carries insurance that can actually answer for a death.
One wrinkle from this week. When the wrong-way car turns out to be stolen, the owner’s policy will usually deny coverage because the driver had no permission, and the driver himself rarely has anything. The recovery then turns toward the victim’s own uninsured motorist coverage, which is exactly the situation that coverage was written for, and toward any third party whose conduct contributed. The charge does not change that math. It changes what a jury may do once the case reaches one.
One word, then. Manslaughter, with intoxication in front of it, is the law saying the choice was made before the car ever moved, and the civil law agreeing hard enough to take the cap off.
The offense: Tex. Penal Code § 49.08; the definition of intoxicated: Tex. Penal Code § 49.01(2). The cap and its exception: Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 41.008(c). Judgments of conviction in civil cases: Tex. R. Evid. 803(22). Provider liability: Tex. Alco. Bev. Code § 2.02. This entry follows the September 7 Dispatch. A charge is an accusation, not a finding. General information, not legal advice.
