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Driving While Intoxicated, DWI and Your Drivers License Forney, Texas DWI Defense Lawyer.
Sexual Offenses, Drug Offenses, Assault and Violent Crimes, Theft, Truancy/School Related Criminal Charges.
If you were on trial for a misdemeanor assault, and a witness accused you of murder, would that prejudice your case? Would you feel better if the judge told the jury to “disregard” the murder allegation?
That brings us to our case of the day, Hecht v. State, No. 05-07-00431-CR.
Facts- Hecht was charged with misdemeanor assault family violence. The State couldn’t get the victim to testify, so the government put on third party witnesses to build their case.
It’s an ice storm auto apocalypse is Dallas. Dallasites are often criticized for their driving performance during winter storms. This criticism is most often heard from snooty mountain state residents with their snow tires and four wheel drive.
Guess what rest-of-America? No one can drive in ice. In Colorado, Minnesota, New York, it snows. It’s easy to drive in snow. I took on a blizzard in Colorado once in a crappy sedan rental car. No problem.
Driving in ice is like, well any other activity on ice. It’s really freakin’ hard. NASCAR drivers would fail on Texas ice.
D magazine’s, Trey Garrison, weighs in on the growth of the Nanny/Police State in Dallas. Our Dear Leaders on the Dallas City Council know how you should live your life. They have enlisted our local police to help you make the “right” decisions.
No minutia of daily activity is beyond the reach of these petty tyrants. Trey Garrison exposes the inanity with a roundup of verboten activities.
BICYCLES
Not a very good one. A Johnson County magistrate earned $50 for each forced blood draw warrant she reviewed.
When you compensate someone for the volume of work done, you will get quantity, but not always quality. What do you know? She signed at least one warrant without the required probable cause.
Today I had two cases dismissed (scoreboarding disclaimer). Let’s discuss why criminal cases are dismissed.
First, let me offer 3 categories of problems that lead to dismissals- factual, legal, and logistical. The first two categories are self explanatory. Logistical problems include actually getting the evidence (or witnesses) in front of a jury.
Legal issues arise from research. Factual issues from investigation. Logistical issues require a deadline and can be manufactured.
The debate over morality and the law is one familiar to any law student. Every 1L is taught the difference between malum in se and malum prohibitum crimes. The former are crimes that are evil (murder), the latter are crimes that are wrong because the government says so (gambling, pot, expired registration etc).
A recent blawg debate asked “Is it immoral to break the law?” To any person who isn’t paid to convict the answer is an obvious no. Laws are written by politicians, not exactly the moral arbiters of our time. Only the most tortured definition of morality would include “anything the majority passes a law against.”
What is not often discussed is the morality of enforcing the law. When is it morally wrong to arrest and prosecute someone for illegal behavior? Prosecutorial apologists would argue that laws represent the morality of the majority and therefore the enforcement can’t be immoral.
Let me beg to differ. There is a great chasm between the prosecution of consensual crimes and morality. The best (or worst) example is the arrest and prosecution of medical marijuana patients.
Each government actor is culpable, from the LEO who arrests the infirm, to the prosecutor who files charges. I’ve seen this cruelty first hand. This isn’t a morally neutral situation, it’s wrong.
Fortunately, Texans are challenging our government’s ignorance and hubris. One such organization is the Texas Coalition for Compassionate Care.
Here is a Q and A withTCCC director Stephen Betzen.
1. Name/background/resume
Stephen Betzen Director.
My degree in in Marine science from Texas A&M University. After graduating I spent one year as an investigator of environmental crimes in Harris County. I went on to teach science for 4 years in HISD. In 2004 I moved to Dallas and started 2 businesses Faircoffee.com and Ecowindchimes.com which did great till last fall. Though still running these businesses I am looking for a job to supplement my income.
More important to me is how I got involved in the Medical Marijuana movement. Though I never opposed medical marijuana, because I have always believed that doctors should be able to treat their patients and not the government… I did not truly believe in it 5 years ago. In fact I said some things that I regret to this day. My change in prospective came as I watched my wife slowly suffer from an unknown illness. Chronic neuropathic pain and spasming in her muscles became a daily problem and were getting worse. We were going through test after test to find the problem with suspicions of MS, fibromyalgia and others… all eventually ruled out. Doctors had prescribed her opiate medications to address the pain, however she stopped using them because that caused so many problems. The strong opiates and muscle relaxers prescribed were addictive and impaired her cognitive functioning, essentially making her lose touch with reality. Since she was unable to work while on these drugs, she had to stop as she owned her own speech therapy practice and had to keep it running. At this point we were in a very dark place in our lives and had lost almost all of our hope when someone who saw her suffering, an angel, placed a package on our porch containing 2 sandwich bags of marijuana and a letter explaining that she should try it to relieve her suffering.
The results were not at all like I had suspected, rather than looking/acting drugged she didn’t miss one day of work and she was still able to function cognitively in order to perform her duties as a speech therapist. I continued to research it and found that medical science is reporting the same results with few side-effects. It made me angry to discover how distorted my previous views were.
I can not explain to you in words the pain for hearing the one you love most, cry every morning. I can not explain the joy of finding the medicine that worked and improved her quality of life in measurable ways. I can not explain the frustration of knowing that to treat my wife and improve her quality of life, I must break the law.
The following year (2007) I joined Texans for Medical Marijuana in their efforts. Unfortunately they shut their doors that summer, and I felt that we needed to move forward. I contacted other patients, caretakers and advocates and found that they also felt the loss of this organization. So we started the Texas Coalition for Compassionate Care and started the search for a non-profit to handle our funds (I still don’t know the technical term for this, I have heard so many)… not only did the Dallas Peace Center agree to handle our funds… but they took us and our mission in completely, so we are technically a committee (and this is better financially for us).
2. What are TCCC’s goals for this legislative session? What bills are you promoting?
We are focusing our efforts on affirmative defense for patients and protecting doctors, which is exactly what HB164 does. We will work on having a senate companion bill filed. The goal this session is to have this bill pass and become law.
My wife and I saw Gran Torino last night. GT is a great film worthy of all the Oscar buzz. I don’t usually do movie reviews but here goes.
GT is a formulaic Eastwood in a good way. Dramatic, funny, and ultimately tragic. The whole time I was just waiting for things to go horribly wrong Million Dollar Baby style. And wrong they went.
Spoiler alert- I’m going to give away the ending so we can discuss the castle doctrine. If you aren’t willing to trade your surprise for this discussion click here.
Client Eastwood’s character Walt is a bigoted veteran who loses his wife. Walt befriends a young boy (Toad) and his sister who live next door. Toad and his sister are harassed by local gang members.
During an altercation Walt points his M1 rifle at the gang. Later, Walt beats the crap out of one gang member. Finally, the gang members assault Toad and rape his sister. You know this isn’t going to end well.
Dirty Harry shows up at the gang’s house for a final confrontation. Walt points his finger at the gang members and says “bang”, shooting them with an imaginary hand pistol. The gang members are nervous, and armed with an assortment of firearms.
Suddenly, Walt reaches into his jacket. The gang members quickly fire multiple rounds into the Space Cowboy, killing him. Walt wasn’t carrying a gun, only his lighter. The gang members are arrested with the expectation of long prison sentences.
Such is the ending of Gran Torino. Walt sacrifices his life so his friends can live in peace. Typical depressing Eastwoodian conclusion.
The movie took place in Michigan. Would Walt’s plan work in Texas? Would the gang members go to prison? Or would the castle doctrine have justified their use of deadly force?
Disclaimer- THIS IS NOT ADVISE (LEGAL OR OTHERWISE). DON’T SHOOT OR NOT SHOOT ANYONE BECAUSE OF THIS. IF YOU DO, YOU ARE A MORON.
If you must read my wildly speculative thoughtless ramblings the discussion is below the jump.
Blawgers are still sifting through the 4th amendment wreckage from the Herring disaster.
How would a similar situation play out under Texas law? Would our exclusionary rule (38.23) protect the public from illegal searches based on non existent warrants?
This brings us to White vs. State, a 1999 case from the San Antonio Court of Appeals. H/T to the TDCAA message board and David Newell for bringing forward this opinion.
SCOTUS has a sorry history of eviscerating constitutional protections to save dope cases. Today’s case, Herring vs. US, is textbook SCOTUS drug war/police apologetics.
Facts-
The police really wanted to arrest Herring because they had arrested him before. Once a criminal always a criminal right? The police knew that Herring was going to the impound lot to visit his car and wanted to arrest him before he left. Herring wasn’t breaking any law. How could these cops arrest Herring without evidence of any crime?
The rise of the paramilitary SWAT team is a testament to the failure of America’s criminal justice system. It defines the transition from peace officers, to law enforcement.
One problem with giving the government the power to kick in doors while playing army is that the government can’t be trusted to kick down the right doors. “New professionalism” advocates like Scalia would be shocked to learn how often the government wields the shock and awe power of the SWAT team at the wrong location.
Recently I file an open records request on Dallas SWAT wrong house raids. The first report I received detailed an incident from December 2005. The person involved didn’t ask for blog publicity, so I won’t reveal any personal information.
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