When a School Employee Faces a DWI Charge

 Posted on May 05, 2021 in Uncategorized

No matter what your profession, anyone can find themselves facing accusations of driving while intoxicated. If you are a public or private school employees, the effects of an arrest, charge, or conviction for DWI can have a significant impact on your employment.

A Representative Story

Consider this representative story. Media report an unfortunate accident leading to the DWI arrest of a public school district's deputy superintendent. The arrested driver reportedly had a loose front wheel fall off, leading to a collision with another vehicle, leading to the investigating officer's sobriety test when the driver allegedly showed signs of intoxication. Officers booked the deputy superintendent into jail until she bonded out to await her first DWI court hearing.

The media report gives no other indication of anything newsworthy about the DWI or vehicle accident. No one, for instance, appears to have been seriously hurt. The story even takes pains to point out that no students or school properties were involved in the accident and that the accident was, therefore, a strictly private matter about which the employing school district would have no further comment. Yet there the story is, big as life, in television and internet news media.

School Employee Special Impacts

The story itself suggests one special impact that a DWI charge against a public school employee can have. The public has an obvious safety concern when a school employee drinks and drives in a way that could potentially harm a student, either one occupying the vehicle or another vehicle, or as a pedestrian on school grounds. Fortunately, that was not the case here. But the concern is legitimate. A school employee charged with a DWI must thus be ready to show the court, prosecutor, employer, and public that student safety was not at risk.

Another concern that this story also suggests is the misuse of public property, although again, the charged school employee was apparently not driving a school vehicle or otherwise using school property. If either student safety or public property had been at risk, then job termination, aggressive prosecution, severe sanction, and public condemnation would all have been in play in this school employee's unfortunate DWI case.

Retain Experienced DWI Defense Representation

These insights are exactly the ones on which Board Certified DWI Specialist Doug Murphy acts in aggressively defending school employees and others engaged in special trades and professions when charged with a DWI. If you or a loved one face a DWI charge, then don't ignore the charge's potential collateral impacts. As an honored and premier DWI defense practitioner, attorney Murphy has successfully defended school employees, public officials, law enforcement officers, public figures, professional and college athletes, and others engaged in special trades and professions.

National DWI expert Doug Murphy knows the potential peculiar impacts that a DWI charge can have on any number of prominent or special occupations. He also knows how to manage DWI proceedings to preserve the defendant's reputation and other personal and professional interests. To beat the DWI charge while protecting other interests, retain 2021 Houston DWI Lawyer of the Year Doug Murphy, who is one of only two Texas lawyers holding both DWI Board Certification and Criminal Law Certification. Contact Murphy & McKinney Law Firm, P.C. online or at 713-229-8333 to discuss your case today.