Ask Deandra: What Is the Difference Between Intoxication Assault and Intoxication Manslaughter?

Here is the longer answer: what each statute requires, what the practical defense issues are, and why these cases demand a coordinated defense from the moment of arrest.

A Note Before Continuing

If you or someone in your family is facing an Intoxication Assault or Intoxication Manslaughter charge in Texas, this post is informational. The actual defense of these cases is a matter of expert legal counsel and not a blog post. The information below is intended to help readers understand the framework, the stakes, and the categories of work involved. Specific case decisions belong with your lawyer.

Intoxication Assault, Penal Code §49.07

Penal Code §49.07 makes it an offense for a person to, by accident or mistake, while operating a motor vehicle in a public place while intoxicated, by reason of that intoxication cause serious bodily injury to another. The statute also reaches operation of an aircraft, watercraft, and amusement ride while intoxicated. The elements are:

• Operating a motor vehicle in a public place, an aircraft, a watercraft, or an amusement ride. The statute separately reaches assembling a mobile amusement ride while intoxicated, and the public place requirement attaches only to the motor vehicle version of the offense.
• Intoxication. The same definition under §49.01 of either a BAC of 0.08 or above, or loss of normal use of mental or physical faculties due to alcohol, drugs, or any combination.
• Causation by accident or mistake. The injury must occur “by accident or mistake,” and the statute does not require intent to cause harm. There is no culpable mental state at all. Nobody has to allege you meant to hurt anyone, and establishing that you did not is no defense. Everything turns on operation, intoxication, and causation.
• Serious bodily injury to another. Section 49.07(b) supplies its own definition rather than borrowing the general one at §1.07. It means injury that creates a substantial risk of death, or that causes serious permanent disfigurement or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ. Note what is absent: pain, and injuries that heal on schedule.
• Causation, meaning the intoxication caused the injury. The State must prove that the intoxication, not some other factor, caused the serious bodily injury.

Intoxication Assault is classified as a third-degree felony under §49.07(c), with the standard third-degree punishment range of two to ten years in TDCJ and fine up to $10,000.

Where the injury line actually falls

Not every serious injury is a serious bodily injury in the legal sense, and the felony rises or falls on that difference. What the reported cases actually show is that the question is usually decided by the quality of the record rather than by the drama of the event.

A gunshot wound is not automatically enough. In Williams v. State, 696 S.W.2d 896 (Tex. Crim. App. 1985), the Court of Criminal Appeals held that a knife wound or a gunshot wound is not serious bodily injury per se and reversed because no testimony whatsoever had been offered to prove it. The State has to put on evidence that the injury created a substantial risk of death, or caused serious permanent disfigurement, or caused protracted loss or impairment of a bodily function.

Scarring works the same way. In Hernandez v. State, 946 S.W.2d 108 (Tex. App. El Paso 1997, no pet.), a stab wound that lacerated the injured man’s liver left a scar, and the court held that was not enough, because there was no evidence about the extent or permanence of the scarring. As that court put it, the fact that an injury causes a scar is not sufficient; there must be evidence of some significant cosmetic deformity.

The other side of that line is equally about the record. Where the State can document that a fracture or an internal injury cost the injured person the use of a limb or an organ for months, or kept them out of work, the protracted loss or impairment prong is generally satisfied. Duration and functional impairment are what the courts look at, not how frightening the crash was.

One thing not to expect. It is tempting to argue that prompt medical treatment eliminated any substantial risk of death, so the injury was never serious. The Court of Criminal Appeals foreclosed that in Blea v. State, 483 S.W.3d 29 (Tex. Crim. App. 2016), holding that a court assessing serious bodily injury should not consider the amelioration or exacerbation of an injury by actions not attributable to the offender, such as medical treatment. Blea disavowed the contrary language in the 1987 plurality opinion in Moore v. State. The injury is measured as inflicted.

The practical consequence is that medical records are defense evidence, not just prosecution evidence. Charging decisions get made early, off how an injury looked in an emergency room on the first night. What the following months show is often a different story, and it only reaches the case if someone goes and gets it.

Enhancements to Intoxication Assault

The enhancement tiers for Intoxication Assault:

• First-degree felony where the person injured was a peace officer or judge in the actual discharge of an official duty. That is five to ninety-nine years or life, not the second-degree range. [§49.09(b-1)(2).]
• Second-degree felony where the person injured was a firefighter or emergency medical services personnel in the actual discharge of an official duty. [§49.09(b-1)(1).]
• Second-degree felony where the serious bodily injury is a traumatic brain injury that results in a persistent vegetative state. This route has nothing to do with who the injured person was. [§49.09(b-4).]

The phrase in the actual discharge of an official duty is also an element rather than scene-setting, and it is where these cases are actually contested. An off-duty officer, or a firefighter driving home from a shift, is not automatically inside the enhancement. The statute also defines firefighter narrowly: either an employee of the state or a political subdivision who is subject to certification by the Texas Commission on Fire Protection, or a member of an organized volunteer fire-fighting unit that serves without pay and holds at least two drills a month of at least two hours each. [§49.09(b-3).]

The defense lawyer’s first task in any Intoxication Assault case is identifying every potential enhancement the State could plead and assessing each one, because the distance between third degree and first degree changes every decision that follows.

Intoxication Manslaughter, Penal Code §49.08

Penal Code §49.08 makes it an offense for a person to operate a motor vehicle in a public place, an aircraft, a watercraft, or an amusement ride while intoxicated and, by reason of that intoxication, cause the death of another by accident or mistake. The elements are essentially the same as Intoxication Assault with the death of another rather than serious bodily injury as the harm element.

Intoxication Manslaughter is classified as a second-degree felony under §49.08(b), with the standard second-degree punishment range of two to twenty years in TDCJ and fine up to $10,000.

One distinction from traditional manslaughter under §19.04 deserves emphasis: intoxication manslaughter does not require proof of recklessness. A driver who was intoxicated and caused a fatal accident through ordinary negligence can be convicted. The State does not have to prove you intended harm or drove recklessly. It only has to prove that you were intoxicated and that your intoxication caused the death.

Enhancements to Intoxication Manslaughter

Where the deceased was a peace officer, firefighter, emergency medical services personnel, or a judge, acting in the actual discharge of an official duty, Intoxication Manslaughter is enhanced to a first-degree felony. First-degree exposure is dramatically higher at five years to ninety-nine years or life in TDCJ, fine up to $10,000. Note the asymmetry with Intoxication Assault: an injury to a firefighter or an EMS provider raises assault only to the second degree, while a death raises manslaughter all the way to the first.

A second route to first degree took effect September 1, 2025, and it has nothing to do with who the victim was. Intoxication manslaughter is now a first-degree felony where the defendant caused the death of more than one person during the same criminal transaction. That is a change in kind rather than in degree. A two-fatality crash no longer has to reach a long sentence by stacking two second-degree counts, because a single count now carries five to ninety-nine years or life on its own.

What the enhancement does and does not require

Be clear about how this provision actually works, because it is described incorrectly in a lot of places, including in an earlier version of this page.

There is no knowledge element. The statute reads that the offense is a first-degree felony if it is shown at trial that the person caused the death of someone in the protected category while that person was in the actual discharge of an official duty. It does not say the defendant must have known, and it contains none of the language the Legislature uses elsewhere when it wants a knowledge requirement. Compare the assault statutes, which enhance only where the offense is committed against a person the actor knows is a public servant, and which supply a presumption of knowledge from a distinctive uniform or badge. Chapter 49 has neither, and §49.11 separately provides that proof of a culpable mental state is not required for any offense in the chapter. Assume a fatality involving an on-duty officer, judge, firefighter or EMS provider triggers first-degree exposure on its own.

What is contested is the other element. In the actual discharge of an official duty is a fact the State has to prove, and it is where the real litigation happens: whether the person was on duty at all, whether what they were doing was an official duty, and whether the record establishes it. An off-duty officer in plain clothes is a genuinely different case from a uniformed officer working an active scene.

Be careful with the word peace officer as well. It is a defined term, and the definition is a specific statutory list of offices. It does not automatically reach everyone who works in law enforcement or corrections. Whether a particular decedent was a peace officer within that definition is a question worth asking rather than assuming.

This is not theoretical. In a case out of Tarrant County, a jury sentenced a woman to life in prison after she pleaded guilty to intoxication manslaughter in the death of a Fort Worth police sergeant. The sergeant was standing outside his vehicle at the scene of an 18-wheeler crash on I-35W in August 2024 when she drove the wrong way up the ramp and struck him, then fled on foot. She will be eligible for parole after serving thirty years. The officer was in uniform at an active scene, so the discharge-of-duty element was never seriously in doubt, and the plea was to intoxication manslaughter of a peace officer, which is what put a life sentence in range at all.

Any case involving a deceased first responder should be approached as a first-degree felony from day one.

Grayson’s Law: The 10-Year Minimum Added in 2025

House Bill 2017, known as Grayson’s Law, took effect on September 1, 2025, and it changed the punishment range for one category of intoxication manslaughter. If the State proves that the defendant was unlawfully present in the United States at the time of the offense, the minimum term of imprisonment rises from two years to ten. The maximum stays at twenty years.

The law also closes the doors that ordinarily soften a second-degree sentence. A defendant sentenced under it is not eligible for community supervision, deferred adjudication, parole, or mandatory supervision until ten calendar years have actually been served, with no credit for good conduct time. The bill is named for Grayson Davis, who was killed in an October 2024 wrong-way crash in Bastrop County.

Three limits matter for anyone reading this. The enhancement is not retroactive: it reaches only offenses committed on or after September 1, 2025. It applies to intoxication manslaughter under §49.08, not to intoxication assault. And immigration status is an element the State has to prove, which makes it a contested question in the case rather than an assumption, one that has to be litigated with the same care as the intoxication evidence itself.

Comparison: §49.07 vs. §49.08

The two offenses are separated by one element: the severity of the harm.

	Intoxication assault	Intoxication manslaughter
Statute	§49.07	§49.08
Harm element	Serious bodily injury to another	Death of another
Classification	Third-degree felony	Second-degree felony
Range	2 to 10 years TDCJ	2 to 20 years TDCJ
Fine	Up to $10,000	Up to $10,000
First responder enhancement	First degree for a peace officer or judge; second degree for a firefighter or EMS personnel	First degree for any of the four

Everything else matches: same operation requirement, same §49.01 definition of intoxication, same “by accident or mistake” framing, same causation burden. The same forensic challenges apply to both, and the same defense investigation of accident reconstruction, medical causation, toxicology, and mitigation applies to both.

What both offenses carry beyond the sentence

• A mandatory jail term even when probation is granted. This catches defendants who assume probation means no jail. Code of Criminal Procedure art. 42A.401(a) requires a term of confinement as a condition of community supervision: not less than 30 days in county jail on an intoxication assault, and not less than 120 days on an intoxication manslaughter. Note the statute’s own wording on the second one. It says a term of confinement rather than confinement in county jail, which the other tiers all specify. And under 42A.401(b) that time is not credited against a sentence imposed if supervision is later revoked.
• A deadly weapon finding, which is common and changes two things. Texas courts have long held that a motor vehicle driven in a manner capable of causing death or serious bodily injury is a deadly weapon, and the State routinely seeks the finding in these cases. It is not automatic; the Court of Criminal Appeals has reversed findings where the evidence did not show the manner of driving was dangerous. But where it sticks, it removes the judge’s authority to grant community supervision, leaving only a jury recommendation where the assessed sentence is ten years or less, and it moves parole eligibility to half the sentence served day for day without good conduct credit, capped at thirty years. On a life sentence that is thirty calendar years before the first parole review.
• No deferred adjudication and no way to seal the record. Article 42A.102(b)(1) names both offenses among those for which a judge may not grant deferred adjudication. And because every DWI nondisclosure statute is limited either to deferred adjudications or to convictions under §49.04, there is no route to sealing a conviction under either section. These convictions are permanent and public.
• License suspension and the state fine. A suspension follows a conviction under either section, though the two are handled by different subsections of the statute. The state fine under Transportation Code 709.001 also applies where the vehicle operated was a motor vehicle: $3,000 on a first conviction within a 36-month period, $6,000 where an alcohol concentration of 0.15 or more was shown, with a mandatory waiver on a finding of indigency.

Sentence Stacking Is What Turns Multiple Victims Into Decades

This is the single most consequential thing on this page, and it is the part almost no summary covers.

The general rule in Texas is that when a defendant is convicted of several offenses arising out of the same criminal episode and prosecuted in a single action, the sentences run concurrently, meaning at the same time. [§3.03(a).] Intoxication assault and intoxication manslaughter are a specific exception. Under Penal Code §3.03(b)(1), where the convictions are for offenses under §49.07 or §49.08 arising out of the same criminal episode, the sentences may run concurrently or consecutively. That holds regardless of whether the convictions are for multiple violations of the same section or a mix of both. Concurrent remains the default; what the exception does is put stacking on the table.

That is the mechanism people are actually describing when they talk about enormous sentences in multi-victim crashes. It is not that one count carries more time. It is that a court may stack two or three sentences end to end instead of running them together. One crash that seriously injures two people can be charged as two counts of intoxication assault, and stacking turns a ten-year ceiling into a twenty-year ceiling. Two deaths can turn a twenty-year ceiling into forty.

The practical consequence is that the count structure in the indictment matters as much as the facts. The number of people injured or killed is the first thing to look at in one of these files, because a plea negotiated without the court’s stacking authority on the table can cost years that a plea negotiated with it does not.

Severance is often raised as the answer to this, and it is worth understanding why it is not a simple one. In an ordinary case a defendant’s right to sever joined offenses is close to absolute on timely request. But §3.04(c) removes that right for exactly the offenses described in §3.03(b), which is to say these two. For an intoxication assault or manslaughter prosecution, severance is available only where the court determines that the defendant or the State would be unfairly prejudiced by joinder. There is also a trap on the other side: §3.04(b) provides that where offenses are severed, §3.03 does not apply at all and the court may run the sentences concurrently or consecutively in its discretion. Whether severance helps is genuinely case-specific and belongs with your lawyer.

Bentley’s Law: Child Support Restitution After a Fatality

Effective September 1, 2023, Texas added a consequence to intoxication manslaughter convictions that most people are not aware of until it is too late to negotiate around.

House Bill 393, codified as Code of Criminal Procedure Article 42.0375, requires a court to order a defendant convicted of intoxication manslaughter to pay monthly restitution for the support of a child whose parent or guardian was the victim, until that child reaches 18 years of age or graduates from high school, whichever occurs later. The defendant cannot be required to pay restitution to an individual who is 19 years of age or older. The amount is set by the court considering the child’s financial needs and resources, the resources of the surviving parent or guardian, the standard of living the child is accustomed to, the child’s physical and emotional condition and educational needs, custody arrangements, work-related child care expenses, and the defendant’s own financial resources.

Three features of the statute deserve emphasis because they are what make it hard to plan around after the fact. Incarceration does not cancel the obligation; it postpones it. Where a defendant cannot pay because of confinement, payments must begin no later than the first anniversary of release, and all arrearages have to be paid even if the payments were scheduled to end while the defendant was still inside. The order is enforceable in the same manner as a civil judgment, and it can be enforced by the Office of the Attorney General as well as by the person receiving it. And restitution paid under the article is credited against any civil judgment for the same death. All of that has to be part of a plea discussion rather than a discovery made afterward.

What These Cases Look Like in Practice

Intoxication Assault and Intoxication Manslaughter cases involve a category of defense work that goes well beyond standard DWI practice:

• Bond conditions are extensive. Continuous alcohol monitoring (SCRAM), ignition interlock, no-driving conditions, no-contact orders with the alleged victim or victim’s family, GPS, travel restrictions, and substantial bond amounts.
• Investigation is multi-track. Standard DWI defense work plus accident reconstruction, medical investigation, witness investigation, and victim impact considerations.
• Discovery is voluminous. Crash scene reports, vehicle inspections, paramedic and hospital records, autopsy reports in manslaughter cases, witness statements, body camera footage, traffic camera footage, cellular records, and toxicology reports.
• Expert witnesses are essential. Accident reconstruction experts, biomechanical engineers, toxicology experts, and medical experts are routinely required.
• Mitigation work begins early. Counseling, treatment, recovery program participation, mental health treatment, and voluntary engagement with the victim’s family in some cases. Mitigation work in serious intoxication cases begins on day one and continues throughout the case.
• Trial preparation is months or years. These cases routinely take a year or more to reach trial. Pretrial motions, discovery battles, expert preparation, and witness preparation all consume substantial time.
• Plea negotiations are layered. Negotiations involve the prosecutor’s office, sometimes the elected District Attorney personally, and in cases where the family’s position affects the resolution, the victim’s family.
• Charges can be filed months later. Particularly in assault cases, charges are sometimes filed long after the collision, when an injury worsens or a serious diagnosis emerges that was not apparent at the scene. A delayed filing does not weaken the defense. The blood evidence, the crash scene data, and the medical progression all remain open to challenge.

None of this is exotic. It is the work that intoxication assault and manslaughter cases require. A defense team that does not approach the case this way is not adequately defending it.

Defense Issues Specific to Intoxication Assault and Manslaughter

In addition to all of the standard DWI defenses, attacking the stop, the arrest, the field sobriety tests, the chemical evidence and the warrant, these cases involve specific issues that do not arise in standard DWI practice:

Causation, and why it is harder than most sites admit

The State must prove that the defendant’s intoxication, not their driving and not their presence at the scene, caused the injury or death. This is where most serious intoxication defenses are built, and it is worth being straight about how the test actually works.

Penal Code §6.04(a) sets it. A person is criminally responsible if the result would not have occurred but for their conduct, operating either alone or concurrently with another cause, unless the concurrent cause was clearly sufficient to produce the result and the conduct of the actor clearly insufficient. Read the last part carefully: both conditions have to be met, not either one.

That is where a lot of bad advice lives. Texas appellate courts have upheld intoxication manslaughter convictions where wet roads contributed to a crash, where another driver created the hazard, and where several factors contributed at once, on the reasoning that even if other factors contributed in some way, they were not clearly sufficient to cause the deaths standing alone. Another driver being partly at fault is not, by itself, a defense to causation in this state.

What does move a causation defense is evidence that the other cause did the work. Consider a driver with a 0.09 BAC proceeding through a green light when another driver runs a red light and causes a collision that kills a passenger. The intoxicated driver was present and was operating a vehicle. But the cause of the collision was the other driver’s traffic violation, and the same crash would have happened with a sober driver in that seat. That is a physical evidence question rather than an argument, which is why independent reconstruction matters more here than anywhere else.

There is also a jury charge dimension that gets overlooked. Where concurrent causation is genuinely in issue, the defense is entitled to have it applied to the facts in the charge and not merely recited in the abstract, and Texas courts have reversed intoxication manslaughter convictions where the charge omitted a concurrent-causation application paragraph. That is a preservation issue as much as a trial issue.

Causation defense work typically includes:

• Independent accident reconstruction. The State’s reconstruction is one perspective, not a fact. A defense reconstruction often produces a different picture of speed, point of impact, sequence, and contribution. Skid mark analysis, speed calculation, and fault attribution all involve technical judgment that can be challenged where the underlying data does not support the conclusion.
• Event data recorder evidence. Modern vehicles record pre-crash speed, brake application, throttle position, steering angle, and seatbelt status in the seconds before impact. That data is often more reliable than eyewitness accounts or a reconstruction built after the fact, and it must be preserved immediately.
• Third-party fault. Evidence that another driver violated a traffic law, was distracted, or created the dangerous condition is directly relevant. It must be developed early, because witness memories fade and surveillance footage is overwritten.
• Road and environmental conditions. Poor lighting, surface defects, obstructed signage, and weather can contribute independently of BAC, though as noted above they rarely carry a causation defense on their own.
• Medical causation. In assault cases, was the injury actually serious bodily injury under §49.07(b)? In manslaughter cases, and particularly in delayed-death cases, whether post-accident medical care, complications, or pre-existing conditions contributed to the fatality can matter, though the concurrent-cause standard above sets a high bar.

The blood evidence

Most of these arrests involve a warrant-authorized blood draw analyzed by a forensic toxicology laboratory, and that result becomes the prosecution’s primary evidence of intoxication. Blood evidence in a serious injury or death case draws higher scrutiny than in a routine DWI, because the evidentiary foundation is more closely examined.

The available challenges include chain of custody, sample collection and preservation, including the preservative and storage history of the specimen, laboratory methodology and analyst qualifications, the calibration and validation record, and measurement uncertainty. The timing question is sharper here than anywhere else: evaluating whether a result reflects the concentration at the time of driving rather than at the time of the draw, which can be hours later, requires pharmacokinetic analysis and retrograde extrapolation. In a death case the margin between a 0.07 and a 0.09 can be the difference between a manslaughter charge and no charge at all.

The warrant, and what Texas good faith actually covers

The warrant itself is fully reviewable. Under Code of Criminal Procedure Article 38.23, evidence obtained in violation of the constitution or laws is suppressible. Texas’s good faith exception is narrower than the federal one, and it is worth understanding precisely, because it is described too broadly almost everywhere.

Article 38.23(b) provides one exception, and only one: evidence obtained by an officer acting in objective good faith reliance upon a warrant issued by a neutral magistrate based on probable cause. Three consequences follow. It does nothing for a warrantless blood draw, because there is no warrant to rely on. It does not rescue a warrant obtained on an unsworn affidavit, which the Court of Criminal Appeals held in Wheeler v. State, 616 S.W.3d 858 (Tex. Crim. App. 2021), because an oath is constitutionally and statutorily indispensable. But it can save a warrant whose affidavit contained illegally obtained information, if the earlier police conduct was close enough to the line of validity that a reasonable officer would have believed the information was not tainted, which is the standard the Court adopted in McClintock v. State, 541 S.W.3d 63 (Tex. Crim. App. 2017). Knowing which of those three situations your case is in is the difference between a motion worth filing and one that is already answered.

Other issues

• Operator identity. In single-vehicle accidents, multi-vehicle accidents with multiple potential drivers, or cases without direct observation of operation, the State must still prove the defendant was operating the vehicle at the relevant moment.
• The deadly weapon allegation. Where the State is seeking a finding, that is its own fight with its own case law and its own consequences for probation and parole, as described above. It should not be conceded as a formality.
• Victim impact and sentencing. Where the case proceeds to a sentencing phase, victim impact statements, the defendant’s post-offense conduct, treatment efforts, and life history all matter substantially.

The Mitigation Picture

Intoxication Assault and Intoxication Manslaughter cases that proceed to a punishment phase, whether after trial or as part of a plea, are decided in significant part by mitigation. In most fatality cases the punishment phase is not an afterthought. It is the main event. Where causation is genuinely contested, the case is tried. Where it is not, the realistic question is often not whether there is a conviction but where in a two-to-twenty-year range the sentence lands, and that range is wide enough that the punishment case deserves as much work as the guilt case.

Categories of mitigation that matter:

• Treatment and rehabilitation. Voluntary substance abuse treatment, recovery program participation, mental health treatment, and counseling, all documented and ongoing.
• Work and family stability. Stable employment, family responsibilities, and community ties.
• Character evidence. Letters from employers, family members, friends, clergy, and community leaders provided in support of sentencing.
• Acceptance of responsibility. Where the defense has decided that resolution rather than trial is the right path, acceptance of responsibility can substantially affect sentencing.
• Engagement with the victim or family. In appropriate cases and through appropriate channels, engagement with the victim or victim’s family, always through counsel and never directly, can affect outcomes.

Mitigation work in serious intoxication cases is a discipline of its own. Mitigation specialists, trained professionals who develop the defendant’s biographical, family, and treatment history into a coherent presentation, are often part of the defense team in these cases. What carries weight is documented evaluation and treatment entered early rather than after a plea, a full clinical and biographical record assembled by someone trained to build one, and a concrete verifiable plan. What does not carry weight is a defendant who arrives at sentencing having done nothing in the intervening year.

What to Do if You or a Family Member Is Charged

Immediate considerations:

• Hire defense counsel immediately. These cases are not for solo or generalist defense. Look for forensic credentials, felony trial experience at the highest level, and a team approach. Local courthouse experience matters. These cases are tried in district court before judges and prosecutors who develop reputations and tendencies that experienced counsel know.
• Address the bond and conditions immediately. Bond conditions in serious intoxication cases are often the most onerous in the criminal system. SCRAM monitoring, ignition interlock, no-driving conditions, no-contact orders and GPS monitoring all merit careful review and, where possible, modification.
• Address the ALR deadline. Even in the most serious cases, the 15-day administrative license deadline applies, running from the date of service of the notice of suspension.
• Preserve the vehicle. Do not authorize repairs or salvage. The event data recorder holds speed, braking and steering data from the seconds before impact, and it is often the most objective record of what actually happened. Once the car is crushed, that evidence is gone.
• Stop talking. Friends, family, jail visitors, recorded jail phone calls and social media have all appeared in serious intoxication prosecutions. The only safe rule is to talk only to your lawyer.
• Avoid contact with the victim or family. Direct contact with the victim of an Intoxication Assault, or with the family of a deceased victim in an Intoxication Manslaughter case, can produce additional charges, bond violations and devastating evidentiary consequences. All communications, where appropriate, go through counsel.
• Begin treatment voluntarily. Substance abuse evaluation, treatment, recovery program participation and mental health treatment where appropriate. Documented and ongoing engagement begun before the case resolves is powerful mitigation.
• Preserve evidence. Photographs of the vehicle and scene, witness contact information, prior driving and treatment records, and employment and family records. The mitigation case in a serious intoxication prosecution often depends on this kind of evidence.
• Be prepared for a long process. Serious intoxication cases routinely take a year or more to reach trial or final resolution. The instinct to resolve quickly almost always costs defendants outcomes they could have achieved with patience.

The Bottom Line

Intoxication Assault under Penal Code §49.07 and Intoxication Manslaughter under §49.08 are the most serious intoxication-related offenses in Texas. They are felonies; they carry significant TDCJ exposure; they involve enhancements that reach first-degree range where the person harmed was a first responder or judge, and since September 2025 where more than one person was killed; they permit stacked sentences where more than one person was harmed; they carry a mandatory jail term even on probation; they cannot be deferred or sealed; and a deadly weapon finding can take probation out of the judge’s hands and push parole to half the sentence. Where they sit against every other Texas DWI charge is laid out on Texas DWI charges. They are also defendable. Cases turn on causation, accident reconstruction, medical analysis, toxicology timing and warrant issues. Outcomes turn on mitigation. The defense work begins on day one and continues for many months. If you or someone you love is facing one of these charges, the first step is finding a defense team that approaches the case with the rigor and the resources it requires.

Intoxication Assault and Manslaughter Defense at Deandra Grant Law

Deandra Grant Law defends serious intoxication-offense cases across North and Central Texas including Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, McKinney, Frisco, Allen, Lewisville, Denton, Rockwall, and Waco. We handle Intoxication Assault, Intoxication Manslaughter, and aggravated intoxication cases with the forensic, investigative, and trial depth they require. Our team includes an ACS-CHAL Forensic Lawyer-Scientist with a Master of Science in Pharmaceutical Science and a Graduate Certificate in Forensic Toxicology, partner-level felony trial experience, and Of Counsel federal experience for the small subset of cases where federal jurisdiction is implicated. We approach these cases as multi-month engagements with a team-based defense because that is what these cases require.

If you or a family member has been charged with Intoxication Assault or Intoxication Manslaughter in Texas, call Deandra Grant Law at (214) 225-7117 or visit texasdwisite.com to schedule a confidential consultation. And remember that the 15-day ALR deadline runs from the date of service of the notice of suspension.

Have a DWI question you want answered in this series? Submit it at texasdwisite.com, and you might see it featured in a future Ask Deandra post.