Appellant Ronald Klaub is currently serving a term of imprisonment following his convictions in 2001 for driving with a suspended license and for first degree vehicular homicide with failure to stop and render aid as the predicate offense. OCGA § 40-6-393 a 1999; OCGA § 40-6-270 b 1999. Following the affirmance of his convictions on appeal,1 Klaub filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in which he contended he was being unlawfully detained in light of a substantive change in the applicable law that occurred after the completion of his direct appeals. The habeas court agreed with Klaub that the change in the law was substantive and therefore retroactively applicable to his case see Luke v. Battle , 275 Ga. 370 2 565 SE2d 816 2002, but denied relief to Klaub after applying the substantive change to Klaub’s case and determining that the evidence presented at Klaub’s trial was sufficient to support the conviction. We granted Klaub’s application for a certificate of probable cause. In Klaub’s direct appeal, a divided Court of Appeals rejected his contention that, in order to convict him of first degree vehicular homicide based on failure to stop and render aid, the State was required to prove his failure to stop and render aid was the cause of the victim’s death. Klaub v. State , 255 Ga. App. 40 2 564 SE2d 471 2002. The appellate court ruled that the illegal act in first degree vehicular homicide predicated on failure to stop and render aid “is causing the death or injury by the accident and then failing to stop and render assistance.” Id., at 45. Five years later, a unanimous Court of Appeals issued a whole-court decision in which it held that the crime was “causing the victim’s death by driving in the way prohibited by the predicate driving offense,” and overruled Division Two of Klaub’s direct appeal. Henry v. State , 284 Ga. App. 893, 895-897 645 SE2d 32 2007. In Henry , the Court of Appeals held that “where the defendant is charged with first degree vehicular homicide based on felony hit-and-run, the plain language of the statute requires the State to prove a causal connection between the felony hit-and-run violation and the victim’s death.” Id., at 896. Under Henry , “a conviction for first degree vehicular homicide predicated on a hit-and-run requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt of all the elements of felony hit-and-run plus the additional element that the defendant’s violation of OCGA § 40-6-270b i.e. failure to stop and render aid was a contributing cause of the victim’s death.” Id. emphasis in original. Stated succinctly, Henry requires reversal of a conviction for first degree vehicular homicide based on the failure to stop and render assistance when the State fails to prove that the defendant caused the victim’s death through his failure to stop and render assistance. Id., at 897. The Henry opinion acknowledged the appellate court had erred in Klaub’s direct appeal because “by interpreting the first degree vehicular homicide statute as not including a requirement that the defendant caused the victim’s death through his failure to stop and render assistance after the accident, . . . the holding in Division 2 of Klaub v. State operates to eliminate an essential element of the offense of first degree vehicular homicide through a violation of the failure to stop and render aid statute. . . .”Id., at 896-897.2
In his habeas petition filed in August 2007, Klaub asserted that, in light of the decision in Henry , he was entitled to relief because the State had failed to prove an essential element of vehicular homicide in Klaub’s prosecution, i.e., the State had not proven that Klaub’s failure to stop and render aid to the victim was a contributing cause of the victim’s death. In his petition, Klaub pointed out the statement of the Court of Appeals in his direct appeal that his failure to stop and render aid was not a contributing cause of the victim’s death: “The conclusion,