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In Texas, homicide is not a single charge. It is the category for causing another person’s death intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, or with criminal negligence, and manslaughter is one offense inside it. When prosecutors weigh homicide vs manslaughter charges, the deciding question is usually what the evidence shows about the accused person’s mental state at the moment of the act.

What Is the Difference Between Homicide and Manslaughter in Texas?

Under Section 19.01 of the Texas Penal Code, criminal homicide includes four offenses, from most to least serious:

1. Capital murder
2. Murder
3. Manslaughter
4. Criminally negligent homicide

Manslaughter, under Section 19.04, means recklessly causing another person’s death.

How Does Mental State Decide the Charge?

Section 6.03 of the Texas Penal Code defines four mental states, from most to least blameworthy, and they line up with the homicide offenses this way:

For both recklessness and criminal negligence, ignoring or missing the risk must be a gross deviation from how an ordinary person would act. The line between them is awareness: a reckless person saw the risk and took it anyway, while a negligent person never saw it but should have. Criminally negligent homicide is punished as a third-degree felony, 2 to 10 years in prison, when a deadly weapon was used or shown. Each grade also allows a fine of up to $10,000.

How Do Prosecutors Prove a Person’s Mental State?

Mental state is rarely proven by direct evidence, so it usually comes from the circumstances. Texas courts have held that a jury can infer intent from a person’s acts, words, and conduct, the method used, and the wounds inflicted, and can infer an intent to kill from the use of a deadly weapon in a deadly manner. Threats made before the incident, how a weapon was used, and what the person did afterward can push the same death toward a murder charge or toward manslaughter.

What Must Prosecutors Prove for a Murder Charge?

Section 19.02 of the Texas Penal Code gives prosecutors four ways to charge murder:

• Intentionally or knowingly causing a death
• Intending serious bodily injury and committing an act clearly dangerous to human life that causes a death
• Committing or attempting a felony other than manslaughter and, in furtherance of it or in immediate flight from it, committing an act clearly dangerous to human life that causes a death, often called felony murder
• Knowingly making or delivering a controlled substance in Penalty Group 1-B, the group that includes fentanyl, when someone dies from using it

The second and third ways of charging murder do not require proof of an intent to kill, so a death that followed an intentionally violent act can be charged as murder even when no one meant for anyone to die.

How Is a Drunk Driving Death Charged?

A death caused by an impaired driver is usually charged under a separate statute rather than as manslaughter. Under Section 49.08 of the Texas Penal Code, intoxication manslaughter is causing a death by accident or mistake while operating a motor vehicle, boat, or aircraft while intoxicated. It is a second-degree felony, and unlike manslaughter, the State does not have to prove any culpable mental state, only the intoxication and that it caused the death.

Does Acting in the Heat of Passion Reduce a Murder Charge?

Acting in the heat of passion, which Texas law calls sudden passion, does not turn murder into manslaughter. It affects only the sentence. At the punishment stage, the defendant may raise the issue of whether the death was caused under the immediate influence of sudden passion arising from an adequate cause, and must prove it by a preponderance of the evidence, meaning more likely than not. If the defendant succeeds, murder is punished as a second-degree felony instead of a first-degree felony.

Under the murder statute, sudden passion must come from provocation by the person killed, or someone acting with that person, at the time of the offense. Adequate cause means provocation that would make a person of ordinary temper incapable of cool reflection.

Can a Murder Charge End in a Manslaughter Conviction?

Yes. Under Article 37.09 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, an offense that differs from the charged crime only because it requires a less culpable mental state is a lesser included offense. When the evidence supports it, a jury in a murder trial may consider manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide instead, so the indictment reflects the State’s theory of the case, not its final result.

Timing works differently in these cases too. Article 12.01 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure sets no statute of limitations for murder or manslaughter, so the State can file either charge at any time. Before trial, a felony charge is generally presented to a grand jury, which decides whether the evidence supports an indictment.

Talk to a Defense Lawyer About Homicide vs Manslaughter Charges

An investigation or arrest after someone’s death can leave you and your family uncertain about what comes next. The Love DuCote Law Firm LLC represents people under investigation or charged after a death in Sugar Land, Fort Bend, Houston, Harris County, and Katy, Texas. Managing partner Leigh Love has successfully tried criminal cases ranging from misdemeanors to murder, and Jeremy B. DuCote has obtained “Not Guilty” jury trial verdicts for clients in cases that include murder. Call 832-662-1294 or contact us so we can review what the evidence says about intent in your case.

The Love DuCote Law Firm LLC – Texas Office
1600 Highway 6, Suite 480
Sugar Land, Texas 77478

Phone: (832) 786 2949
Fax: (832) 553 7765