DWI With Multiple Child Passengers - Part 2

 Posted on April 30, 2024 in DUI/DWI

In this blog, we will continue our topic from last week and provide more information on DWI with multiple child passengers. Driving while intoxicated with multiple child passengers is a serious felony in Texas. Often, it is parents who are arrested on this charge. For other vehicle operators at certain times of life, having multiple child passengers in their vehicle is not that unusual, even though they may not be parents of multiple children. If you have been charged with a DWI while carrying child passengers, you must immediately seek the advice of an experienced Houston, TX felony DWI lawyer.

Other Multiple Child Passengers Situations

School bus drivers and drivers of general transportation buses and vans would be obvious examples. But you do not have to be a bus driver to have multiple children in your vehicle. Parents carpool to take children to school and pick up children after school. Grandparents pick up grandchildren and their friends for trips to the pool, playground, or museum. Teachers and coaches take groups of children to school athletic practices and events, while teachers and volunteers take groups of children on field trips and to band, choir, and drama performances. Aunts, uncles, other relatives, and friends take groups of children to plays, ball games, zoos, and all kinds of other social, cultural, and recreational events.

Some of those events include food and drink, even intoxicating drinks. Keep in mind, too, that Texas DWI laws reach and criminalize intoxicated driving due to prescription drugs, sleeping pills, cannabis or derivatives, and other substances, not to mention open containers in the vehicle and other DWI-related crimes. Responsible parents and chaperones can sometimes run afoul of Texas DWI laws in relatively innocent-seeming circumstances. A felony DWI charge involving multiple child passengers does not typically involve a hardened criminal defendant. Just the opposite is more often true - defendants in these circumstances are often among the most trusted and responsible of individuals.

Texas’s Felony DWI With Child Passengers Crime

Texas Penal Code Section 49.045(a) defines the DWI with a child passenger crime as follows: "A person commits an offense if: (1) the person is intoxicated while operating a motor vehicle in a public place, and (2) the vehicle being operated by the person is occupied by a passenger who is younger than 15 years of age." 

While the statute numbers only two elements, Texas's felony DWI charge with a child passenger, in fact, requires the prosecution to prove several elements. The defendant must have (1) operated a motor vehicle (2) in a place accessible to the public (3) while intoxicated (4) with a child under the age of fifteen years old in the vehicle. If the prosecution fails to prove each element of the charge beyond a reasonable doubt, then the charge should fail.

Contact a Harris County, TX Felony DWI Lawyer 

Murphy & McKinney Law Firm, P.C. is highly experienced in defending people who have been arrested for DWI with multiple children in the vehicle. Houston, TX DWI with a child passenger attorney Doug Murphy is Board Certified in DUI Defense by the National College for DUI Defense. Contact us at 713-229-8333 for a complimentary consultation.