explaining that offense of abandoning or endangering a child can dispense with requirement of awareness of danger because person subject to that offense has already assumed a duty to act reasonably, and it is the neglect of this duty that is criminalized
How later courts described this case
- explaining that offense of abandoning or endangering a child can dispense with requirement of awareness of danger because person subject to that offense has already assumed a duty to act reasonably, and it is the neglect of this duty that is criminalized
- stating “[w]e agree with the Court of Appeals that, according to the plain language of Sec. 22.041, the fact that ‘intentionally’ immediately 'precedes ‘abandons’ means that the prescribed mental state is connected with the act of abandonment itself ’
- construing the child- abandonment statute at Texas Penal Code Section 22.041(b), holding that “the fact that ‘intentionally’ immediately precedes ‘abandons’ means that the prescribed mental state is connected with the act of abandonment itself” rather than element of surrounding circumstances
- concluding that “evidence and inferences permitted to be drawn from it” supported defendant’s child-abandonment conviction
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
MALONEY and MANSFIELD, JJ.,
concur with note: I concur in the judgment of the Court, believing that proof of intentional abandonment as defined by the statute, with *5 out requiring proof of an additional mens rea, is all that is necessary to sustain a conviction under Tex.Penal Code Ann. § 22.041(b).