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This is a question we get a lot at Guest and Gray. Clients want to know if character reference letters will help their case, or help them get a better plea offer. The answer is “it might help, but it can’t hurt”. I tell my clients that they should get as many letters as they can from the most credible/important people they know who are not relatives (letters from mom don’t really help). And that at the right time we might share these with the prosecutor (the timing is more art than science).

Let’s start with misdemeanors- if you are facing a DWI or pot case most prosecutors won’t think you are a scumbag criminal anyway (the exception being noob true believer ADAs), so there is not a lot of room to improve your character in their eyes because they should understand you just got caught in the unlucky lottery of the criminal justice system. One challenge is that misdemeanor prosecutors typically have hundreds of cases at any given time, and it can be hard to get them to review much new information on any one case.

Still, it can’t hurt. Will it get your case dismissed? No, but it can help move the needle a little in plea negotiations. For example, I’ve had cases where I was looking to get a deferred offer down to a pre trial diversion, and character evidence has helped in those situations.

DMN has a story alleging Dallas DA Susan Hawk has struggled with prescription drug abuse and may continue to do so this day. The story links her struggle to erratic behavior in office (firing top assistants) and alleges a trip to a rehab facility in California. There seems to be a certain irony when DAs or ADAs are accused of potentially illegal behavior. Being addicted to pills is not always a criminal offense. Many people with chronic illness become reliant on the medication it takes to function normally. They have legal prescription but their bodies can not cease taking these drugs without repercussion, physical or physcological.

Having represented a lot of addicts I can tell you that going to treatment does not “cure” them. It can give them tools to succeed, but addiction and addictive personalities are something that come from biological and psychological underpinnings that are very difficult to change. Rehab helps many, but some still struggle even after many trips to rehab. Thank your DNA and brain chemistry that you not are predisposed to addiction before judging a “junkie” or “pill popper”.

The focus on treatment instead of prison is a welcome change in recent years, but we are still using the criminal justice system to address a public health issue with an “abstinence only” model when it comes to use and probation. There is a reason a dirty UA is called a “technical” violation even though it’s evidence of a crime, because they are so common we can not afford to revoke all those who fail a piss while on probation. And because probation is a shitty way to help addicts.

Our State’s most electable citizens have been hard at work protecting Texans from the plague of frivolous lawsuits that were destroying the very fabric of our State. Without our State’s tort reform laws in place who would be the voice for All State, Farmers, or other multi-billion dollar corporations as they face the wrath of regular citizens looking to be compensated for their injuries?

Now that we have effectively granted immunity to the healthcare industry and Big Insurance let us focus our tort reform energy on the criminal justice system. It’s worth repeating that prosecutor in Texas are the most powerful and least accountable members of the legal profession. They can unilaterally decide someone is guilty and convince nearly anyone, guilty or innocent, to plead guilty rather than face the rigged game we call a criminal jury trial. Let’s look at some tort reform ideas that could serve the criminal justice system.

Caps of Damages

I get it, hiring a defense lawyer is a difficult decision. Clients are about to make a choice that may affect the rest of their life, and they want some degree of certainty before picking one of us. Many clients ask what our firm can guarantee if hired. I explain our process and how our team defends cases. You know, the process and hard work that leads to a great result (sometimes). But what clients really mean is they want a guaranteed outcome, which we don’t offer, and would it be unethical if we did. The next question is usually what are the odds of a certain result, and until now, I’ve never had those numbers handy.

But for 2014 our firm went through our closed cases (cases that were pled, dismissed, no billed, diverted, rejected etc; basically any case that ended in 2014) and came up with the following stats. These totals don’t include traffic tickets because those are more about revenue generation for local governments than actual criminal law.

Closed cases for 2014 (non traffic)= 84.

A little over a month ago I detailed my journey into the Android realm after leaving the safe and familiar grounds of Appleland. To recap, I had used every Iphone since they had Iphone, and rather impulsively switched to a Galaxy S5 Active. For those of you who are still thinking about making the switch, here are some updates and some more app recommendations.

I got a Moto X 2014

I dumped the S5 Active and swapped it out for the Moto X. I was intrigued by the efficient software design and the built in Moto Assist features. The Moto X runs a near stock version of KitKat and has some add ons that are useful, but I don’t use them as much as I thought I would. If you spend much time reading Android forums you’ll notice that the Samsung TouchWiz software is not well thought of UI. Well, let’s back up for a second and make something clear.

I have a lot of 17-19 year old clients who feel targeted by small town police departments. These young adults are usually in my office for a pot case, or maybe even a DWI or DUI (DUI is only for those under 21 in Texas) and they tell a similar story; that the police pull them and/or their friends over consistently and they don’t know how to stop the harassment. First, advice for parents.

For Parents

If your child is being pulled over frequently, or if he has friends who are targets or have been arrested recently then it’s important that you have him (it’s almost alway a male) meet with a lawyer and get him either on retainer, or establish a relationship so your he can lawyer up when he is pulled over.

I’ve been using IPhones as long as there has been IPhones. I recently became upgrade eligible (Christmas for tech geeks) and instead of getting the IPhone 6/6 Plus I decided to switch to Android and purchased a Samsung Galaxy S5 Active. I’m a week into this and I wanted to share the experience for those of you thinking about making the switch. I chose the Active version of the S5 with the hope of going without a phone case. It feels much less delicate than my Iphone and I like not having an extra layer of plastic around my phone.

Should you switch? TLDR

I know this is what most of you want to know, so I’ll cut to the chase. If you are somewhat tech savvy, use google apps and enjoy technology with less limitations then yes, switch to Android. You won’t miss IOS/Iphone and you can still use your old Ipad if you do. If you just want a phone that works and is simple to use, stick with Iphone. Android isn’t especially difficult to use, but you have to know/care enough to go through the settings for different apps to get the most out of Android.

We convict a lot of innocent people in Texas. For a lucky few defendants, we figure out they are innocent before we take away years/decades of their life or put them to death. Let’s say you are arrested but it turns out that there was no probable cause and the charges are dropped, can you sue and hold anyone in the government accountable? Sure you can sue, the better question is, can you win? That can be tougher that you’d think, even for blatant constitutional violations, like arrests without probable case.

The reason for this is qualified immunity. Qualified immunity is a monument of police state judicial activism, in which our federal courts invented a doctrine that shifts the costs of wrongful arrests (sitting in jail, bail money, hiring a lawyer etc) to the public. What started as a limited common law defense grew as the court added more and more hurdles for Plaintiffs to clear to bring a case and survive summary judgments.

Again, the federal doctrine of qualified immunity is not a law passed by Congress, federal judges just made it up, and it protects officers who make mistakes on the job. I don’t have immunity in my law practice, you probably don’t have immunity in your job (although negligent doctors in Texas bought practical immunity with the help of TLR), but government actors do.