A Beaumont man convicted of murder for a collision that killed a Vidor teenager in three years ago might get a new trial after a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruling. The court ruled last week that the state district judge in Orange should have allowed the jury to consider a manslaughter charge along with the murder charge.
35-year-old Kelvin Lee Roy was convicted of murder for killing 16-year-old Alexandria “Lexy” Bertrand. The jury in August 2014 gave a punishment of 75 years.
Roy’s attorney at the time had requested that the jury also consider a manslaughter charge. Manslaughter in Texas is a second degree felony with a punishment of two to 20 years in prison.
“The trial judge denied his (Roy’s) for a jury instruction on the lesser included offense of manslaughter,” the Criminal Court of Appeals wrote in the decision. “Because there was more than a scintilla of evidence that would allow a jury to rationally find that if Roy was guilty, he was guilty of only manslaughter, we reverse the court of appeals.”
The Ninth Court of Appeals in Beaumont upheld the murder conviction. The case was then appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest court in the state for criminal law.
The Court of Criminal Appeals is sending the case back to the Ninth Court of Appeals. Based on a decision from the Ninth Court of Appeals, Roy might be granted a new trial.
The teenager was killed on February 7, 2014, when Roy speeded down Main Street in Vidor. The car he was driving went airborne on the railroad tracks. The sedan landed on top of the Honda minivan in which Bertrand was riding with her mother.
Roy’s girlfriend, who was in the car, testified in the August 2014 trial before 163rd District Judge Dennis Powell that he had smoked PCP and was threatening to kill them by wrecking her car. She said they had driven at a high speed from Beaumont on Interstate 10 and turned into Vidor. He had been drinking but his blood alcohol was below the legal amount of intoxication. Besides the PCP, he also had marijuana in his blood.
“A jury could rationally find that Roy did not intend to harm (his girlfriend) and that his reckless behavior caused Bertrand’s death,” the Court of Criminal Appeals wrote.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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