## Facts

- Jeri Dawn Montgomery drove an SUV on a three-lane service road near IH-45 while talking on a cell phone.
- After ending the call, she realized she had missed the entrance ramp that diverged from the left lane.
- Montgomery abruptly attempted to move left to reach the ramp, including movement into an area marked by widening solid white lines separating the service road from the ramp.
- A truck in the left lane, traveling about the speed limit, struck the rear of Montgomery’s SUV after she pulled in front of it.
- The impact pushed Montgomery’s SUV into the ramp area, where it collided with a Chevrolet Silverado.
- A passenger in the Silverado was ejected and died at the scene.
- A grand jury indicted Montgomery for criminally negligent homicide, alleging an unsafe lane change and failure to keep a proper lookout.
- A jury convicted Montgomery and found her vehicle was a deadly weapon; punishment was ten years’ confinement (probated for ten years) and a $10,000 fine.
- The intermediate appellate court found the evidence insufficient and rendered an acquittal, reasoning that cell-phone use while driving was not morally blameworthy conduct and suggesting the negligent act had to be illegal.
- The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted review.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence was legally sufficient to support criminally negligent homicide under the required appellate standard viewing evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict.
2. Whether criminally negligent homicide requires that the predicate negligent act be independently illegal.
3. Whether the jury could treat cell-phone-related distraction and a last-second lane-change maneuver as circumstances supporting criminal negligence.

## Decision

- The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the intermediate appellate court’s judgment of acquittal.
- The Court held the evidence was legally sufficient to support the jury’s finding of criminal negligence.
- The Court reinstated the jury’s conviction and deadly-weapon finding.
- The Court concluded the intermediate appellate court misapplied sufficiency review by discounting incriminating circumstances and reweighing evidence.

## Legal Principles

- Criminal negligence is measured objectively: whether the defendant ought to have been aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk, and whether the failure to perceive it is a gross deviation from ordinary care under similar circumstances.
- Legal-sufficiency review requires viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict and asking whether any rational factfinder could have found the elements beyond a reasonable doubt.
- Criminally negligent homicide does not require that the specific negligent act be independently unlawful; the focus is the risk created by the conduct in context.
- Cell-phone use while driving may be considered as contextual evidence of distraction contributing to risk, even if not unlawful per se.

## Conclusion

The court held that a rational jury could find criminal negligence where a driver, while distracted and attempting to correct a missed exit, abruptly moved into or toward a marked separation area and cut off another vehicle, creating a substantial and unjustifiable risk that resulted in a fatal collision; the predicate negligence need not be a separately illegal act, and appellate courts must defer to reasonable jury inferences when applying legal-sufficiency review.


Montgomery v. State, 369 S.W.3d 188 (Tex. Crim. App. 2012)