Court Opinion

ID: 9672784
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:00:16.772685+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:18.305794
License: Public Domain

WOODLEY, Judge
(concurring).
I concur in approving the opinion of Judge Dice, but would add the following.
The court, in his charge, instructed the jury: “Our statute provides that if any driver or operator of a motor vehicle shall wilfully or with negligence, collide with or cause injury less than *244death to any other person, he shall be guilty of aggravated assault with a motor vehicle * * *.”
This charge is in almost the identical language of Art. 1149 P.C., under which this prosecution was had.
Following the above quoted language the charge stated the punishment provided in Art. 1149 P.C., and defined “negligence."
The court then applied the law to the facts and instructed the jury to convict if they found that appellant did drive an automobile “and did then and there commit an aggravated assault upon the person of Jimmy Benjamin Kemp by then and there colliding with and causing injury less than death" to his person.
This was a sufficient submission in a prosecution under Art. 1149 P.C. If appellant thought he was entitled to have the jury make a finding on whether the collision was “wilful” or “with negligence”, or if he thought that the jury should be confined to a collision “with negligence,” it was incumbent upon him to call the matter to the attention of the trial judge by objection or requested charge. The statute, Art. 1149 P.C., applies whether the collision was “wilful” or was “with negligence.”
A bit of evidence not mentioned in Judge Dice's opinion explains somewhat the conduct of appellant and his companions and their effort to escape from the pursuing officers. It was shown that there was stolen property in the car, and as stated, appellant was on parole from the penitentiary.
The jury was warranted in finding that appellant with negligence collided with and injured Kemp. If it was not wilful, it was with negligence. In either event, under Art. 1149 P.C. this offense was aggravated assault with a motor vehicle.