Edwin Glen Bigon, Appellant v. the State of Texas

Summary

The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the court of appeals' handling of Edwin Bigon's six convictions from two indictments arising out of a single drunk-driving collision that killed a driver and her infant daughter. It held that felony DWI with a child passenger, an offense requiring no culpable mental state, could serve as the underlying felony for felony murder; that the evidence legally sufficed to show the fatal driving was 'in furtherance' of that felony; and that admitting the DPS chemist's retrograde-extrapolation testimony was not an abuse of discretion. It also approved the lower court's sua sponte ruling that felony murder, intoxication manslaughter, and manslaughter, as indicted on the same facts for the same victims, are the same offense for multiple-punishments purposes, and because all six sentences were identical it retained the first-degree felony-murder convictions as the 'most serious offense,' rejecting any role for prosecutorial preference. Presiding Judge Keller dissented: agreeing with the double-jeopardy finding, he would have remanded to the local prosecutor's office to choose which convictions to retain rather than using degree of felony as a tie-breaker.