Court Opinion

ID: 9748455
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:02:13.312709+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:35.438271
License: Public Domain

LEE ANN DAUPHINOT, Justice,
concurring.
Appellant Christopher Blake Alami was charged with felony murder, with felony driving while intoxicated (DWI) as the predicate felony. Appellant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence, and the majority correctly holds the evidence sufficient under the Jackson standard. But the majority mistakenly states that I do not believe felony DWI can serve as the underlying felony in a felony-murder prosecution.1 So long as the State proves that a defendant committed an act clearly dangerous to human life that caused the death of an individual during the commission of a felony, including a felony DWI, the State proves felony murder. However, the underlying felony alone cannot be the act clearly dangerous to human life.
This court, our sister courts, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals have all addressed the issue of whether felony murder and intoxication manslaughter are in pari materia. That is, we have all addressed the question of whether proving death during DWI is, alone, sufficient to prove felony murder. We have held that it is not. This court explained,
Importantly, felony murder and intoxication manslaughter require different elements of proof. Felony murder requires the commission of an underlying felony, which intoxication manslaughter does not — a person can be convicted of intoxication manslaughter even if he was committing misdemeanor DWI at the time his actions caused another’s death. Felony murder also requires that the defendant have committed “an act clearly dangerous to human life,” yet the intoxication manslaughter statute applies when the defendant causes a death by “accident or mistake.”2
Felony murder requires an underlying felony as well as a second act clearly dangerous to human life that results in the death of another person.3 Intoxication manslaughter requires DWI and death.4 Clearly, DWI cannot, alone, be the act clearly dangerous to human life. If it were, every intoxication manslaughter would be a felony murder if the driver had *894been twice previously convicted of DWI, and there would be no need to plead or to prove an additional act clearly dangerous to human life.
The majority here has affirmed a conviction for felony murder when DWI serves as the predicate felony and the act clearly dangerous to human life is the intoxicated driving. As the majority points out, Timothy Lovett, the accident reconstruetionist who testified for the State, stated that the automobile crash that killed Kumar was the type of automobile crash that he would expect to see when an intoxicated driver was involved because a sober person could have avoided the collision.5 Officer Brown testified that Appellant’s intoxicated driving caused the wreck. Although the act clearly dangerous to human life may flow naturally from the underlying felony, the legislature has not permitted the act to be the underlying felony offense.
Felony murder has two distinct requirements: the commission of an underlying felony, which may or may not require a mental state, and the commission of an act clearly dangerous to human life.6
The State understandably wanted a higher range of punishment than intoxication manslaughter provides for a person who was committing felony DWI when he caused the death of another person.7 Because there is now a single range of punishment for intoxication manslaughter, whether the resulting death is caused during the driver’s first, third, fourth, or fifth DWI,8 the State is forced into the position of trying to separate the intoxicated driving from DWI.
Respectfully, I would submit that the legislature should assess the situation to determine whether it is appropriate for the penalty for intoxication manslaughter to be higher when the person committing the offense has twice previously been convicted of DWI, making the current DWI a felony DWI. The legislature can easily rewrite the statute so that intoxication manslaughter for a first or even second DWI can have a different range of punishment from intoxication manslaughter committed by a person who has already been twice convicted of DWI.9
Neither the judicial branch nor the executive branch makes laws. Neither the judicial branch nor the executive branch determines the appropriate range of punishment. These decisions fall within the exclusive province of the legislature. As the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reminds us,
[W]e interpret the Legislature’s statutes, not its intentions.... As the Supreme Court reminded us ..., “[I]f Congress enacted into law something different from what it intended, then it should amend the statute to conform it to its intent. It is beyond our province to rescue Congress from its drafting errors, and to provide for what we might think ... is the preferred result.”10
*895Because I agree that the evidence is sufficient to support Appellants conviction but also believe that the legislature should consider modifying the range of punishment available under the intoxication manslaughter statute when the defendant has multiple DWI convictions, I respectfully concur.

. Majority op. at 888.

. Strickland v. State, 193 S.W.3d 662, 667-68 (Tex.App.-Fort Worth 2006, pet. ref’d) (citations omitted).

. See Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 19.02(b)(3) (Vernon 2003).

. Id. § 49.08 (Vernon Supp. 2010).

. Majority op. at 887-88.

. Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 19.02(b)(3).

. See id. §§ 19.02(b), (c) (providing felony murder is generally a first-degree felony), 49.08 (providing intoxication manslaughter is generally a second-degree felony).

. Getts v. State, 155 S.W.3d 153, 158 (Tex. Crim.App.2005) (quoting Lamie v. U.S. Trustee, 540 U.S. 526, 542, 124 S.Ct. 1023, 1034, 157 L.Ed.2d 1024 (2004)).

. See id. § 49.08.

. See, e.g., id. § 49.09(b — 1), (b — 2), (b — 3) (elevating intoxication manslaughter to a first-degree felony if the person killed was a peace officer, firefighter, or emergency medical services personnel discharging an official duty).