Articles Posted in Uncategorized

When you show up in court without an attorney it’s not unusual for a judge to set you for trial, especially if you make multiple appearances sans counsel. Judges like to move their docket, and some believe that a trial setting may be what it takes to motivate a defendant to hire a lawyer, or cop a plea with the state.

If you can not afford an attorney, be sure and let the court know early on. Ask for a “Pauper’s Oath” or “Affidavit of Indigency” to apply for court appointed counsel, or the public defender.

The economy sucks, and many of you are underemployed, or unemployed, but you still may not be broke enough to qualify for a public defender. Remember, the government’s broke too, and if the County can find a way to not pay for your attorney, they will. Most defendants prefer a “free world lawyer” to court appointed counsel, but anything is better than representing yourself at trial.

Terry vs. Ohio gave us the Terry stop, in which cops can investigate a situation that looks an imminent crime, but where no crime has yet occurred. In Terry, an officer saw individual casing an establishment and he approached to see if a burglary was nigh.

Since then, officers have been able to prevent and investigate imminent crimes. All SCOTUS required was the officer articulate facts showing a particular crime was about to committed. With that background let’s go to our most recent appellate disaster,Derishweiler vs. State-

Facts- Derischweiler was in a McDonald’s parking lot. Derischweiler drove by a car occupied by a paranoid couple of modern day hall monitors, the Holdens. Derisch drove by 2 or 3 times, each time smiling and staring at the Holdens for 10-20 seconds. Naturally, the Holdens did what all beta loser couples do, they demanded immediate state intervention and called 911.

The legislature has batted around the idea of DWI checkpoints for years. Fortunately, our elected officials have never decided to approve the deplorable practice of treating every Texas driver like a criminal sans cause.

Despite the best efforts of MADD, Texans want the police solving crime, not harassing innocent motorists.

Fortunately for the “papiere bitte” crowd, the legislature isn’t the only way to create new police powers in Texas. Save that lobbyists money MADD, invest in a few Amicus Curiaes instead. A body of elected officials in Austin just approved drug detection roadblocks, and it wasn’t the legislature.

I’ll be on with Gary Johnson, 90.1 FM out of Austin tomorrow night at 8pm CT.

http://www.ruleoflawradio.com/#listen

Not sure what our topics are at this point. Gary asked what I wanted to speak on. I told him my best subjects are

The joys of flying in America. Long lines, bad (or no) food, the aroma of unwashed passengers, screaming babies, and now… the chance to be molested and/or viewed naked by TSA goons.

The backlash is growing. Write your reps and let them know how you feel. TSA is molesting children, if you aren’t going to stand up for liberty now, then when?

From drudge-

Last night was the showdown, the State of Texas vs. Robert Guest. Allegedly, I was speeding through some godforsaken town on I-45. The citizens of this horrible city have decided to forsake gainful enterprise and instead steal money from commuters. Theft, not industry or commerce, that’s their tax base. To that end, the city has unleashed an army of rabid officers to prey upon, and cite with reckless abandon, the driving public.

As I have blogged before, the whole muni court process is about stealing your money and inducing massive give up among defendants. Tickets have nothing to do with justice, little even to do with public safety. Instead, cops act as tax agents and harass hard working otherwise law abiding commuters, like me.

Really, should speeding a few miles over the limit be a criminal offense? If so, should it require a $200 donation to some municipality? Who set that amount? That’s not justice, that’s extortion.

My blog has been void of new content lately. This is in large part to a just completed reworking of Guest Law Firm PC. We’re going paperless. My intern, David Ruff a brilliant law student at OCU, has been studiously scanning every file and organizing our database. I know it sucks to scan files all day, but I’ve been mixing in some exciting courtroom action to make it worthwhile. Office work may not be intellectually challenging, but he’s getting some lessons in law office management that will pay off much more that punching out Pro Doc boilerplate all day.

The end result of David’s hard work is that GLFPC made the switch from Elawsoftware to CLIO. Elaw was a cutting edge program 4 years ago, but we’ve grown frustrated by the complete lack of updates and the fact that Elaw ONLY works with internet explorer (Chrome all the way).

Elaw has a few features I really miss (automatic court appearance letters etc), but it had reliability problems that drove me batshit crazy at times. It was designed in Texas for criminal defense lawyers and I still recommend it to my PC bound friends.

DMN has a piece on Dallas County’s DNA exoneration team. The goal now is move to non DNA cases where, undoubtedly, dozens if not hundreds of innocent defendants have been convicted over the years.

DNA cases are the low hanging fruit of wrongful convictions. Why are so many people wrongfully convicted? One reason is that eyewitnesses can be pretty lousy when it comes to identifying a suspect in court. Here’s a quote from DMN

Ware, prosecutor Cynthia R. Garza, investigator James Hammond and paralegal Jena Parker – the four members of the conviction integrity unit – say they are using the lessons learned from the certainty of the wrongful convictions in the DNA cases to guide them.

This is a guide for defendants facing a Driving While Intoxicated charge in Kaufman County, Texas.

1. The Stop

The typical scenario for a DWI arrest in Kaufman is a stop by local police after midnight for an innocous traffic violation (speeding, no license plate light, failure to maintain a single lane). These are mostly “pre text” stops. That is, the police don’t really care about the speeding or turn signal. They really are hoping to arrest you for DWI. Since most local police officers are not qualified to perform field sobriety tests, a DPS trooper is usually called to the scene to assist. The usually battery of field sobriety tests are requested (HGN, One Leg Stand, Walk and Turn). Then you are off to the police station to meet the intoxilyzer. Bail will be set the next morning, usually between $1500 and $3000 for a DWI 1st. The police steal your driver’s license and you leave the jail with two yellow sheets of paper. Now what?