BILL ANALYSIS

H.B. 1581

By: Thimesch

Criminal Jurisprudence

Committee Report (Unamended)

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

Fentanyl overdoses have been on the rise over the last several years and the amount of the drug that is making it into the state has increased exponentially. According to the governor's office website, since Operation Lone Star launched, the Texas Department of Public Safety has seized more than 361 million lethal doses of fentanyl in Texas, enough to kill the entire state's population several times over. Just a few weeks ago, in one of the cities in the author's district, House District 65, two dealers were arrested for distributing pills containing fentanyl. Their actions resulted in the death of three teens from a local high school and the injury of seven more. Current statute makes death or serious bodily injury (SBI) an enhancement to the charge of manufacture or delivery of a controlled substance. The result is a state jail felony, and the severity is dependent on the amount of the drug present at the scene or in the bloodstream of the deceased at the time an autopsy is performed. Local attorneys state that it is difficult  to prosecute such crimes under the law as it is written. The issue they are encountering is that it is rare for all of the drugs involved to remain at the scene when law enforcement arrives or for there to be a high enough concentration of the drugs in the body of the victim when an autopsy is performed. H.B. 1581 would create a standalone charge for the delivery of a controlled substance causing death or SBI.  The penalty would not depend on the amount of the controlled substance that was delivered and would make SBI a second degree felony and death a first degree felony.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE IMPACT

It is the committee's opinion that this bill expressly does one or more of the following: creates a criminal offense, increases the punishment for an existing criminal offense or category of offenses, or changes the eligibility of a person for community supervision, parole, or mandatory supervision.

RULEMAKING AUTHORITY

It is the committee's opinion that this bill does not expressly grant any additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, department, agency, or institution.

ANALYSIS

H.B. 1581 amends the Health and Safety Code to create an offense for a person who knowingly manufactures or delivers a controlled substance that is in violation of the Texas Controlled Substances Act and a person dies or suffers serious bodily injury as a result of introducing any amount of that substance into the person's body, regardless of whether the substance was used by itself or with another substance. The bill establishes that the offense is a second degree felony if it resulted in serious bodily injury to a person and a first degree felony if it resulted in a person's death. If conduct constituting the offense also constitutes another Penal Code offense, the actor may be prosecuted for either offense or both offenses. The bill establishes a defense to prosecution that the actor's conduct in manufacturing or delivering the controlled substance was authorized under the Texas Controlled Substances Act or federal law. The bill prohibits the court from ordering the sentence for this offense to run concurrently with any other sentence the court imposes on the defendant. The bill applies only to an offense committed on or after the bill's effective date. The bill provides for the continuation of the law in effect before the bill's effective date for purposes of an offense, or any element thereof, that occurred before that date.

EFFECTIVE DATE

September 1, 2023.