Court Opinion

ID: 9774401
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:19:00.155772+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:07.939434
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON APPELLANT’S MOTION FOR REHEARING
TOM G. DAVIS, Judge.
Appellant urges that our opinion on original submission was in error in holding (1) that the issue of causation was not raised by the evidence and (2) that the failure of the trial court to charge thereon was not error after appellant had timely objected thereto.
Appellant urges that he was entitled to an instruction under V.T.C.A. Penal Code, Sec. 6.04(a), which provides:
“A person is criminally responsible if the result would not have occurred but for his conduct, operating either alone or concurrently with another cause, unless the concurrent cause was clearly sufficient to produce the result and the conduct of the actor clearly insufficient.”
Appellant argues that he was entitled to an instruction under Sec. 6.04(a), supra, because of the evidence which showed that there had been an earlier wreck and that deceased was on the highway as a result of such wreck.
By its very terms only a very narrow application can be given to Sec. 6.04, supra, and this is graphically noted by the following, which appears in the Practice Commentary following this section:
“The causal connection between criminal conduct and a proscribed result (usually some harm to person or property) is clear in the great mine-run of cases. When the actor points a pistol at the victim, pulls the trigger, and the victim falls dead, for example, there is no question of causal connection and the trial court does not charge on the causal issue.
“When some agency in addition to the actor contributes to the proscribed re-*236suit — for example, when the actor shoots V with intent to kill him, but wounds him instead, and V then dies in a traffic collision on the way to the hospital — a causal relation issue is sometimes presented.”
The fact that the earlier wreck and the conduct of the deceased may have been a “concurrent cause” is not enough to raise the issue unless there is evidence which tends to show that this concurrent cause “was clearly sufficient to bring about the resulting death of the deceased.” We find that the evidence did not raise such an issue since there was clearly a causal connection between the conduct of the appellant and the death of the deceased.
Appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.