## Facts

- Late one evening, Devry Resendez drove about 102 miles per hour on a Texas highway and rear-ended a car driven by Roxann Munguia, with Carmen Cantu as a passenger.
- The impact caused the vehicles to spin, and Munguia’s car came to rest on the highway facing the wrong direction.
- Munguia’s car was left without its headlights or hazard lights flashing.
- A couple stopped to assist Munguia and began pulling her away from the wrecked car.
- About seven minutes after the first collision, a vehicle driven by Thomas Wallin, traveling about 58 miles per hour, struck Munguia’s disabled car because he did not see it soon enough to stop or swerve.
- After the second impact, Munguia and other witnesses found Cantu lying on the pavement; Cantu later died from her injuries.
- Police arrested Resendez on suspicion of driving while intoxicated; she consented to a blood test showing a blood-alcohol concentration above the legal limit.
- Resendez was tried and convicted of intoxication manslaughter and appealed, arguing that Wallin’s later collision was an intervening act that made Wallin the superseding cause of Cantu’s death.

## Issues

1. Whether the later collision by a third-party driver with the disabled vehicle was a superseding cause that relieved Resendez of criminal responsibility for intoxication manslaughter.
2. Whether the evidence was sufficient to support a finding that Resendez’s intoxicated driving was a but-for cause of Cantu’s death even though a second driver later struck the wreck.

## Decision

- The appellate court affirmed the intoxication manslaughter conviction.
- The court rejected Resendez’s argument that Wallin’s collision was a superseding cause breaking the causal chain.
- The court concluded the jury could rationally find that Resendez’s conduct set in motion events that led to Cantu’s fatal injuries and that the later collision operated, at most, as a concurrent cause.

## Legal Principles

- Criminal causation is satisfied when the prohibited result would not have occurred but for the defendant’s conduct, either alone or together with another cause.
- A later act by another person does not cut off liability unless it constitutes a new, independent cause that alone produces the result and is so unexpected that it breaks the chain of causation.
- When a defendant’s conduct creates a dangerous roadway condition, a subsequent collision can be treated as a foreseeable consequence rather than an independent cause that eliminates but-for causation.
- In reviewing evidentiary sufficiency, an appellate court considers whether a rational jury could find the elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt, including causation.

## Conclusion

Resendez’s intoxicated, high-speed rear-end collision left a vehicle disabled, unlit, and facing the wrong direction on a highway, and a second driver struck that vehicle minutes later, after which the passenger died. The appellate court held the later collision did not break causation because the jury could find Resendez’s conduct remained a but-for cause of the death and the later impact functioned as a concurrent, foreseeable cause, so the conviction was affirmed.


Resendez v. State, 2013 WL 5676064 (2013)