How Harris County DA parses crosswalk fatality laws
New Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare told Axios he doesn't plan on filing charges under a relatively new law aimed at protecting pedestrians in crosswalks, choosing instead to pursue a different statute against drivers.
Why it matters: Teare's policy, which he also employed as a prosecutor under his predecessor, has so far resulted in zero drivers facing charges for killing pedestrians in Harris County crosswalks, per an Axios analysis of 21 crash reports and court documents.
Catch up quick: Texas lawmakers in 2021 passed the Lisa Torry Smith Act, named after a woman killed in a crosswalk in 2017. It created a criminal offense for drivers in such instances.
If the collision causes "serious bodily injury" — which under Texas law includes death — the charge is a state jail felony punishable by up to two years' confinement, with a possible fine up to $10,000.
State of play: In an interview with Axios in December, Teare said the 2021 law "does have utility on the serious bodily injury cases."
But in cases where the victim dies, Teare prefers to charge drivers with criminally negligent homicide, also a state jail felony with an identical punishment range as the Lisa Torry Smith law.
Zoom in: Harris County grand jurors have twice declined to press charges of criminally negligent homicide against drivers accused by police of failing to yield right-of-way and killing someone in a crosswalk since the Lisa Torry Smith Act took effect in September 2021, according to an Axios review.
Six more cases are still under review and have yet to be presented to a Harris County grand jury.
They include the January 2024 death of 64-year-old Patricia Martin in downtown and the death of 2-year-old Emmanuel Molina, who died while crossing the street with his grandmother in December.
Though prosecutors' grand jury presentations are secretive, Teare told Axios his office would seek criminally negligent homicide charges in those remaining cases.
What they're saying:"I don't understand why we would ever even envision filing this [charge] when there's a fatality when we have the criminally negligent homicide statute," Teare said.
"In the Lisa Torry Smith [law], it just deals with bodily injury and serious bodily injury. It doesn't even have a provision for fatalities."
Teare said one reason he's preferential to pursuing criminally negligent homicide charges is that prosecutors don't have to prove that the victim was "violating the law themselves," he said.
Charges under the Lisa Torry Smith Act are contingent on the pedestrian having been lawfully in the crosswalk when they were struck. They also can't have suddenly darted out in front of the driver, according to the statute.
Reality check: Prosecutors in other Texas counties, including neighboring Fort Bend and Austin's Travis County, have charged and obtained at least one conviction in a half-dozen crosswalk death cases under the Lisa Torry Smith law.
Fort Bend County District Attorney Brian Middleton, whose office is currently prosecuting two crosswalk death cases under the new statute, said a the circumstances of a crash can be easily discernible from an immediate but thorough investigation by police.
"Each [crash] is judged on a case-by-case basis, and [with] every investigation, the outcome is fact-specific," Middleton tells Axios, adding that instances where a pedestrian in a crosswalk jumps in front of a car are rare.
The bottom line: Families of people killed in crosswalks last year are waiting for Teare's next move in their cases.
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