Court Opinion

ID: 9863007
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 02:49:42.934114+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:46:02.281918
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
From earlier decisions construing the statute denouncing the offense, the Court has discerned that “the essential point that the accused must know an accident has occurred before the duty to stop and render aid arises, and before he may be held culpable for failure to stop and render aid, is as sound today as then.” Goss v. State, 582 S.W.2d 782, 785 (Tex.Cr.App.1979). Combining related statutory provisions under the new penal code and the uniform traffic act, the Court found that “the culpable mental state thereby required for the offense of failing to stop and render aid is that the accused had knowledge of the circumstances surrounding this conduct ... i.e., had knowledge that an accident had occurred,” ibid. Accordingly, the Court held that knowledge that an accident had occurred is “an element of the offense, and therefore must be alleged,” ibid.
The indictment in Goss v. State, supra, and later its twin in Brown v. State, 600 S.W.2d 834 (Tex.Cr.App.1980), was defective in that each “utterly fails to allege that appellant knew that an accident had occurred,” 1 Goss, at 785; Brown, at 835, and the Court said that deficiency was not supplied by an allegation at the outset that an *916accused “did intentionally and knowingly drive and operate a motor vehicle ...” since “it is not an offense to drive a car,” Goss, at 785. To be noted also is that the Goss indictment did not thereafter allege a culpable mental state — particularly, none was stated before the allegation that he “did then and there fail and refuse to immediately stop and remain at the scene ... and did ... fail and refuse to render reasonable assistance” to the named injured party. See Goss, p. 783.
The indictments were respectively set aside for omissions in Ex parte Rogers, 589 S.W.2d 132 (Tex.Cr.App.1979) and Salazar v. State, 589 S.W.2d 412 (Tex.Cr.App.1979), in that no culpable mental state whatsoever was alleged. Moreover, though the indictment in Salazar alleged that he did fail to stop and make arrangements for carrying the injured party in for medical treatment, “it being apparent that such treatment was necessary by reason of said injuries,” the Court found that charge “does not satisfy the requirement that the indictment allege that the actor knew an accident involving the victim occurred,” id., at 413. But an indictment alleging that an accused “did then and there intentionally and knowingly fail to stop ... it being apparent that such treatment was necessary by reason of said injuries received...” (emphasis in original) was held sufficient to charge the offense, it being distinguishable from the one held defective in Goss, Williams v. State, 600 S.W.2d 832, 833 (Tex.Cr.App.1980); so also in Abrego v. State, 596 S.W.2d 891, 892 (Tex.Cr.App.1980).
What then of the indictment in the instant case?
Setting out the charging part of the indictment in full, as the competing opinions have, tends to obscure the thrust of its operative allegations. The essence of the allegations that while operating a motor vehicle appellant “did then and there knowingly and intentionally ... make an improper lane change which caused ... a driver to take evasive action which resulted in an accident and subsequent injuries ... and the defendant did after said accident, knowingly and intentionally fail to stop and render all reasonable assistance..., including the making of arrangements for ... medical treatment, it being apparent that such medical treatment ... was necessary ...''
The opinion by Presiding Judge Onion finds that “neither of these allegations is sufficient in stating the required allegation of knowing that an accident occurred in which the car appellant was driving was involved.” And it is certainly true that the underscored language said to be required does not appear in haec verba. Yet, it was not included in the indictments upheld by the Court in Williams and Abrego, both supra, the latter being an opinion of a Court Panel that survived motion for rehearing considered by the Court En Banc. Since the Williams and Abrego indictments allege that which the Goss indictment did not, the opinions are in harmony.
Beyond the considerations in Williams and Abrego, supra, when both allegations are even more distilled, read together and reasonably understood, the charge against appellant is that he knowingly drove his vehicle in the manner stated such as to cause an accident and injuries, and then knowingly failed to stop and render apparently needed treatment for those injuries. If the indictment is to be faulted at all, one might criticize it for excessive factual aver-ments, but that it alleges all elements of the offense proscribed by the statutory provisions combined in Goss seems clear to me.
Thus, without subscribing to all that he writes, I come to the same result reached in the opinion by Judge McCormick. Accordingly, I join the judgment of the Court in affirming the judgment of the trial court.

. All emphasis is mine unless otherwise indicated.