I am looking for a capital murder indictment. The two victims include a women and her unborn child (8 months pregnant).

Can anyone help!?

[This message was edited by Admin on 02-28-06 at .]

Contact Jana McCown (512-943-1234). She just finished prosecuting such a case.

Thanks so much for your help Mr. Bradley. I think that is just what we needed.

Does it make a difference to anyone how many months along the child was? I have one that the victim was three months pregant. I know that is okay by Texas Statute, but does it give anyone pause that the US Supreme Court does not consider that an individual.

The Supremes have never ruled on a criminal statute like this, have they? If not, I'd be careful about drawing analogies to other rulings, esp. abortion-related opinions.

I would think the major issue in a 1st-trimester case would be proving mens rea, no?

This morning we concluded, by plea of guilty, one such case where the pregnancy was just a few weeks. The indictment alleged intent to cause serious bodily injury and committed an act clearly dangerous to human life (def shot the mother in the pelvic area) and thereby caused the death of an individual (unborn child). With transferred intent there is no requirement to prove that def intended to kill the unborn child; need not even prove that the def knew she was pregnant. This case was a particularly evil aggravated assault where def shot the victim (mother) in the torso first, then proceeded to walk over and shoot her point blank in the pelvic area. During the ag. assault jury trial guilt deliberations were about six minutes and punishment was delivered in less than three. Max of 20 years was not quite enough, according to jurors, so he now has 25 to do on the murder as well.

Transferred intent works for murder, but not capital murder. Still need I/K mental state under 19.03, right?

As for Patrick's nasty fact pattern: note that for offenses after 9/1/05, an agg. assault involving DW and SBI and family violence = 1st-degree range. Bet the jury would've given him more than 20 on the underlying case if they could have! That's exactly the type of heinous crime for which the new law is intended.

In our recent case, we ended up dropping the fetus part of the capital murder indictment because we had no proof the defendant knew Mom was pregnant, and we had plenty of evidence for a separate capital murder theory (for death of Mom in course of burglary, robbery, rape).

The concern was just what Shannon expresses: doesn't there have to be proof of specific intent for the theory of murder of a fetus? The courts have not spoken, and we chose not to be the first to litigate the issue.