Posted on March 03,2021 in Uncategorized

This week, a Jefferson County court sentenced a Beaumont, Texas man to 18 years in prison after a July 4, 2018, drunk driving accident that killed a three-year-old boy and seriously injured his two-year-old sister. The children's family was returning home from an Independence Day firework show when another driver ran a stop sign and broadsided their SUV. The driver struck the SUV with such force that it pushed the SUV off the road and into the yard of a nearby church. He originally refused a field sobriety test but was taken to the hospital with internal injuries, where police obtained a blood test.

The driver originally faced an indictment on Nov. 7, 2018, for intoxication assault and second-degree felony intoxication manslaughter. At the time, he was also serving ten years of probation for a 2016 charge of assault family violence. The driver pled guilty to a charge of intoxication manslaughter in exchange for dismissal of the intoxication assault and assault family violence charges.

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 Posted on March 03,2021 in Uncategorized

You'd think an accident's severity, whether rolling a vehicle over, colliding with another vehicle at an intersection, going the wrong way down a one-way highway, or hitting a street sign, utility pole, or building, wouldn't matter to a DWI charge. Intoxicated driving should be intoxicated driving, depending on blood-alcohol level, driver identification, vehicle operation, and similar objective elements of the legal case. But a DWI charge differs from a conviction and can indeed depend on other factors.

Unwanted Attention

An accident's severity and notoriety, meaning whether it catches public attention or not, often appears to influence a DWI charge. When an accident requires a roadside response not just from the investigating officer but also fire and other emergency-safety personnel, medical personnel, and multiple tow trucks, it tends to get greater investigative attention, too. And when it mimics an action movie's car-chase scene and maybe also involves a public figure, it gets greater prosecutorial attention, especially when making headline news. Fair or not, if you are the driver in a single-vehicle rollover accident, you'd better not have been drinking and driving.

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 Posted on March 03,2021 in Uncategorized

Earlier this month, a woman's call to 911 after a hit-and-run crash led to a high-risk traffic stop. After the woman called emergency operators, a second person called 911 and told operators he would shoot the original caller if police approached his car. When police located him just south of Medical City Denton on South Mayhill Road, they reported a strong smell of alcohol coming from the car, although the driver claimed he hadn't been drinking. During the DWI investigation, police found numerous open containers of alcohol in the car and a firearm.

Police arrested the man for DWI, an accident involving damage to a vehicle greater than or equal to $200, and unlawful carrying of a weapon. After discovering the man had a 2019 conviction for DWI, police enhanced the charge to DWI second offense. If you end up in a situation where the police suspect you of DWI and another crime, it's important to understand what will happen and how you can defuse the situation.

DWI and Open Containers

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 Posted on March 03,2021 in Uncategorized

Icy weather conditions obviously make driving worse. The driving hazards that an ice storm presents are greater in warmer regions like Houston, Austin, and Southeast Texas, where vehicles may lack the all-weather tires, drivers may lack the all-weather driving skills, and transportation departments may lack the salt, sand, and road-clearing equipment one finds in northern climes.

Yet icy weather further compounds the driving issues that intoxicated drivers face. The visual-impairment, impaired attention, and slowed reaction times typical of intoxicated drivers make even more difficult the already-difficult icy driving conditions. And even if the intoxicated driver is adequately skilled and attentive, other unskilled or poorly equipped drivers may contribute to an accident, leading to the intoxicated driver's discovery and DWI charge.

An Illustrating Accident

One Austin-area report of a February 2021 fatal accident illustrates the peculiar snow-and-ice hazard facing intoxicated drivers. The story reports a driver's crash into a retaining wall on a West 290 overpass due to severe icing. Icing tends to be greater on overpasses because of the cooler roadbed temperatures. Unfortunately, when the driver exited his vehicle to check for damage, another vehicle driven by an allegedly intoxicated driver slid toward the first driver, causing the first driver to fall over the overpass to his death below.

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 Posted on February 02,2021 in Uncategorized

Police, firefighters, and emergency-medical technicians regularly respond to DWI motor-vehicle accidents, often bringing with them a fleet of emergency vehicles. Those first responders can occasionally suffer injury at the scene, and their vehicles may incur collision damage. The injury and damage may be from a careless passing motorist. In some instances, though, the injury and damage is from the suspected intoxicated driver and not just careless, but rather intentional.

First-Responder Risks

One recent Harris County incident shows how the fear of a DWI stop and arrest may trigger aberrant behavior creating serious first-responder risks. A media report reflects that a Harris County sheriff's deputy was directing traffic around a major crash when he tried to stop a passing vehicle. Authorities allege that rather than stop, the suspect attempted to strike the deputy with the suspect's vehicle, crashing instead into a fire truck at the scene.

The report indicates that things then only got worse. The suspect allegedly put his vehicle in reverse, striking the fire truck again, before driving away from the scene. Police chased the vehicle down a dead-end road, where the vehicle crashed and the driver allegedly fled on foot. Pursuing officers quickly caught and arrested the allegedly intoxicated driver, whom authorities indicate faces charges of assault on a peace officer, evading arrest, and DWI.

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 Posted on February 02,2021 in Uncategorized

The prior story of a veteran whom authorities deported after a second DWI but who finally won his legal readmission to the U.S. described the veteran's long and lonely road out of the U.S. Consider here the veteran's short road back.

The story resumes with the deported veteran still working in Ciudad Juarez, just across the Rio Grande from the El Paso home in which his wife and kids lived, a situation that had persisted on and off for around twenty years. Fortunately, though, the veteran had in 2016 met a public-interest lawyer who helped the veteran apply for naturalization under the 2004 Supreme Court decision that removed a simple DWI as an automatically deportable offense.

The story continues that the veteran's application languished for years until September 2020, when federal officials called the veteran to the U.S. border at El Paso. They had a surprise for him: they would swear him in there as a citizen and admit him permanently to the U.S. Incredibly, after about two decades of living apart from his own wife and children, the veteran was free to rejoin them in El Paso, where the veteran promptly found technician work once again.

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 Posted on February 02,2021 in Uncategorized

The report is that in early 2020 the Texas legislature will again consider legislation legalizing marijuana use. Last year, the governor signed legislation allowing Texas farmers to grow low-THC hemp, already legal for sale in Texas. The report indicates the legislature also last year included terminal cancer and autism as medical conditions qualifying Texas residents for a low-THC medical-cannabis program. THC is the psychoactive element in marijuana.

The question of marijuana legalization is fraught with social, cultural, medical, and economic considerations. The report indicates that legislators in Texas divide on the issue, just as they do in other states, the Texas House having passed a decriminalization bill last year, only to have it die in the Senate. Other states are joining the legalization trend. Consider, though, what legalization would mean for DWI arrests in Texas.

Driving Under Marijuana's Influence Can Lead to a DWI Arrest

Decriminalizing marijuana in Texas wouldn't change the grounds for a DWI arrest. Texas Penal Code Section 49.04(a) defines a DWI as when "the person is intoxicated while operating a motor vehicle in a public place." Intoxication, whether from alcohol or drugs, is the statute's element, not the legality or illegality of the intoxicating agent. Most DWI charges involve intoxication from perfectly legal alcohol. Some DWI charges involve intoxication from perfectly legal drugs.

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 Posted on February 02,2021 in Uncategorized

The story of a Texas drunk driver allegedly streaming himself on Facebook Live must be another sign of our social-media times.

Maybe in this twenty-first century it's not so surprising that someone would record questionable conduct live on social media. A 2017 report alleged nearly fifty separate acts of violence transmitted across Facebook Live. In 2019, the world saw a New Zealand man use Facebook Live to livestream a massacre. We've also seen a mid-2020 report of a driver recorded on Facebook Live while fleeing police, right up to his gunshot death.

What makes this late 2020 Texas DWI story especially concerning is the allegation that the driver's actions resulted in multiple traffic deaths. The story reports that the video, occurring just minutes before the fatal crash, recorded the driver drinking beer, also passed among the vehicle's three passengers, one of whom streamed the event. The story reports that the driver allegedly said that he drives better when he drinks.

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 Posted on February 02,2021 in Uncategorized

The story of a recent fatal Austin motor-vehicle accident allegedly caused by an intoxicated driver is another sad one among many. The allegedly intoxicated driver ran a flashing red light, colliding with a vehicle driven by a hard-working recent immigrant whose seven children are now forever without their father's love and support. The deceased immigrant was also the sole support of his non-English speaking wife for whom, the story reports, he did everything.

The allegedly intoxicated driver now faces intoxication-manslaughter charges, which is the DWI charge when the intoxicated driving causes another's death. Those criminal charges were certainly predictable enough, although the charge alone does not mean a conviction. As DWI Specialist Doug Murphy explains here, defenses to the criminal charge may exist, such as that any intoxication, if intoxication was, in fact, present, did not cause the accident, which occurred in this case at a four-way flashing-red stop.

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 Posted on February 02,2021 in Uncategorized

If you've been involved in an accident in Texas and had an open container of alcohol in your vehicle, you probably realized the seriousness of the matter. Even if no one is hurt, you can face charges of driving with an open container and will undoubtedly face investigation for driving while intoxicated. But it's important to understand the rights you have when facing questioning from the police and whether police have the right to require you to take a blood-alcohol test.

A Bryan, Texas man recently faced this situation after flipping his truck on 29th Street. Police allegedly found the truck empty and abandoned but with alcohol in the vehicle. Police reported they found the man about a block away, where he claimed he had not been drinking. Police also reported that the man was unable to stand on his own and refused a blood alcohol test. After obtaining a warrant, police took him to the hospital, where several people had to hold him down to obtain blood for the BAC test. Police arrested the man for driving while intoxicated and resisting arrest or search.

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