Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog

November 15, 2012

Guest and Gray, PC your local legal team

It’s probably past time to announce that I partnered up. Guest Law Firm PC was laid to rest over 18 months ago, but I’ve been too busy to really blog about it until now. I would like to take this opportunity to let all solo practitioners know that having a good law partner makes this job much more enjoyable. Being a solo attorney means having to solve every legal problem, make every client happy, have every great marketing/business idea, follow up on every payment, court date, correspondence etc. It’s a 24/7 job that obliterates any separation of your personal and professional life. If you can give up controlling every little decision and learn to trust your colleagues you can have a much happier and more fulfilling professional existence.

When you have a team of attorneys working together you get some wonderful benefits including specialization of labor (I’m the IT/advertising department at Guest and Gray, in addition to my criminal defense duties), economies of scale (for some reason legal research pricing screws solos), and a built in team of law therapists to share you frustrations with. This is a stressful job and it’s great to have peers you trust to brainstorm with, vent, or just discuss the latest legal happenings.

Since our inception of 5/2/10 we’ve added two new attorneys and are looking to open a new office next year. The current make up of Guest and Gray PC is

November 15, 2012

Thoughts on a Forney Grow House

by Robert Guest

Both Forney online media outlets are reporting that a grow house was discovered in the Windmill Farms subdivision. It appears the house was abandoned and no arrests were made. Thank goodness. The last thing we need to waste our local tax dollars on is another pot case.

You know what will end residential grow houses? Legalization.

I know people who have tried to brew their own beer and most quit after a batch or two. It’s a messy and smelly process. It’s not easy to make something that even compares to Beast lite, much less Chimay. I’ve never seen someone convert an entire residence to making bathtub bock. And why would they? They can march down to Wal Mart and buy a better product at a low price and save themselves the trouble. For some reason we can’t apply this rational reality based approach to weed. It’s a strange situation given how dangerous booze is relative to pot. You could smoke every ounce of bud in this grow house and it wouldn’t kill you.

July 31, 2012

Dallas Court of Appeals Reverses Sexual Assault of Child Conviction

by Robert Guest

Today the Dallas Court of Appeals reversed a sexual assault of a child conviction. The case is Wiseman vs. State. This case highlights the limits of expert testimony on the issue of honesty. Basically, an expert can’t offer an opinion that certain groups of people lie, or certain groups tell the truth.

The expert testified that only 2% of children make up sexual assault allegations, and that most of those false allegations are from child custody cases. Fortunately, even in convict-at-all-Texas we don’t allow trial by statistics.

What’s the law on sexual assault experts? From the opinion-

July 29, 2012

Dallas Court of Appeals Rules for Kaufman Sheriff in Open Records Case

by Robert Guest

What happens when an inmate sues the sheriff for open records information?

Today’s case of the day is In Re Brian Edwards Johnson-

In 2008 Brian Edwards Johnson was incarcerated in the Kaufman County jail and sustained an injury. Not sure why he was in jail, or what the injury was. In 2011, Johnson was still an inmate (not sure where) and he filed an open records request to obtain records regarding the 2008 injury. The Sheriff denied the request and asked the AG to rule on the issue. The AG agreed with the Sheriff. Johnson filed suit and appealed to the 5th District in Dallas.

July 27, 2012

Kaufman County Criminal Court Records

by Robert Guest

For the longest time I’ve been using KaufmanCountyClerk.com to search for case information. You click on “court public record search” and get directed here.

As long as I’ve been in Kaufman the KCC site has been a reliable cornucopia of case information. Recently something strange has happened to the search site and now it’s mostly FUBAR. New cases don’t appear, old cases have entries deleted, it’s a mess. I’m not sure what’s going on, and I don’t have time to investigate.

Fortunately, Kaufman County has another online database for case information available through KaufmanCounty.net. Click on Court Records and you are sent here.

July 26, 2012

Texas Child Pornography Law- What is a “lewd exhibition”?

by Robert Guest

I’m betting that most of you have parents. And most of your parents owned a camera. And with that camera some of your parents took a picture of you sans clothing while you were young. Well, what makes that legal? Isn’t in a crime to possess naked pictures of kids? Could those photos be… child pornography? Are your parents sex offenders? Probably not. But to be sure, you better read the rest of my post.

What’s the Texas law on Child Pornography?

To the penal code, section 43.26.

June 24, 2012

Kaufman County Failure to Register Conviction Reversed

by Robert Guest

A Kaufman County conviction for Failure to Register as a Sex Offender was reversed last week for factual insufficiency. Basically, it appears the State indicted the defendant under the wrong section of the code of criminal procedure. Factual insufficiency reversals are pretty rare, so let’s walk through how the court reached it’s decision.

Today’s case of the day is- Roberts vs. State.

What happened?

May 24, 2012

CCA Limits DWI Blood Warrants

by Robert Guest

I’m amazed on how banal DWI blood warrants have become. Maybe I shouldn’t be. Look how far we’ve come in just a few shorts years. The TSA molests plane passengers without cause, and it’s largely a non-issue. The police can demand that you give them your blood, and few seem to care. We’ve had DPS drones deployed for while (since discontinued) and… no one cared. I’m wondering what it willl take before privacy and liberty enter our political lexicon. Is there anything the public won’t suffer in the name of public safety? Moving on.

Let’s talk blood warrant appeals. Today’s CCA case of the day is Sanchez vs. State-

What happened? A judge from Montgomery county signed a warrant to take Sanchez’ blood in Harris County.

May 23, 2012

Court of Criminal Appeals Ok’s Illegal Traffic Stops If The Driver Has An Oustanding Warrant

by Robert Guest

Here’s a paragraph that makes my libertarian blood boil.

So, while the initial stop itself was illegal (emphasis mine), Grijalva never went beyond the bounds of what would have been constitutionally permissible had the stop in fact been justified at its inception. Under these circumstances, applying the law, as we have explicated it in this opinion, to the undisputed facts of the case in our de novo review, we conclude that the behavior of the arresting officers, although clearly unlawful at the outset, was not so particularly purposeful and flagrant that the discovery of the appellee’s outstanding arrest warrants may not serve to break the causal connection between the illegal stop and the discovery of the ecstasy in the appellee’s pants pocket, thus purging the primary taint.

The cops acted illegally, but that’s ok. Ugh.

Today’s case of the day is Mazuca vs. State, from El Paso.

May 18, 2012

Abel Assessment belongs on the Junk Science Scrapheap

by Robert Guest

One reason Texas convicts so many innocent people is our lax standards for allowing the State to admit “scientific” evidence at trial. Given the State’s nearly limitless resources for experts, supply is racing to catch up with demand, whether or not the science is sound or not.

Trial courts are supposed to be the gatekeepers of scientific evidence and limit what the jury can hear. That sounds great in theory, but in practice the State almost always gets in whatever “expert” they designate. It was this atmosphere that allowed the complete bullshit “science” of “dog scent lineups” to pollute our courtrooms.

The latest victim of junk science is Michael Arena. Michael was wrongfully convicted (his “victim” has completely recanted, stating that she was coerced by her mother to lie) of sexual assault, and sentenced to 20 years.