Someone died in a road accident I caused — is that treated differently from other negligence?

The ordinary scheme, and the exception carved out of it

Normally the penalty under Art. 365 is worked out by asking what the act would have been had it been intentional — a grave, less grave or light felony — and applying the corresponding penalty for reckless or for simple imprudence. The article then removes one situation from that machinery: when, by imprudence or negligence and with violation of the Automobile Law, the death of a person shall be caused, in which case the defendant shall be punished by prisión correccional in its medium and maximum periods. Two elements have to meet there: a death, and a violation of the traffic legislation the clause refers to.

The charge is still about carelessness, not intent

Nothing in this converts an accident into a deliberate killing. The conduct the article reaches is voluntarily, but without malice, doing or failing to do an act from which material damage results by reason of inexcusable lack of precaution. The act of driving is willed; the death is not. What the prosecution has to establish is the want of precaution and the causal link to the death, and what the defence commonly contests is precisely that — whether the precaution taken was adequate in the conditions, and whether the death followed from the driving or from something else.

Leaving the scene changes the exposure again

The same article provides that the penalty next higher in degree applies to an offender who fails to lend on the spot such help as may be in his hands to give. In a case where someone has died this is often the difference that dominates everything else, and it turns on conduct in the minutes after the collision rather than on the driving. Whatever else a driver in this position does, the account of what he did at the scene, and what he could safely do, is going to be examined closely.

The claim by the family runs alongside the case

Criminal liability for a felony brings civil liability with it under Art. 100, so the family's claim is ordinarily resolved in the same proceeding rather than in a separate one begun later. That means the two run on one timetable and the evidence of loss matters from the start. If you are the driver, secure the scene evidence, the vehicle, the maintenance records and any footage now, and take them with the traffic documents to a lawyer before giving a statement. Nothing about the outcome of a case like this is settled in advance.

Related provisions

• Revised Penal Code, Article 365 — Imprudence And Negligence
• Revised Penal Code, Article 100 — Criminal Liability Means Civil Liability