Posted on January 01, 2021 in Uncategorized

A Texas DWI charge is difficult enough to deal with, for all of a DWI conviction's potential consequences. The lesson here, though, is not to turn a manageable or even beatable DWI charge into something much worse: adding multiple more-serious charges to the DWI violation.

It's an extreme example, but consider: early December 2020 media reports allege that Texas state troopers in Chambers County tried to pull over a vehicle driven recklessly by a Fresno suspect. Prosecutors later filed a DWI charge against the Fresno resident related to his erratic driving. But the DWI charge was only the beginning of the story.

Instead of submitting to arrest, the driver allegedly led the troopers on a high-speed chase ending in the driver's vehicle crash in downtown Beaumont. Media reports that the driver's fruitless flight led to evading-detention and evidence-tampering charges. Flight is not an option. It only adds substantially to the event's risks while leading to additional charges.

Continue Reading ››

 Posted on January 01, 2021 in Uncategorized

Motor-vehicle crashes are always unfortunate, no matter the contributing causes or severity of the results. But when a vehicle occupant, whether passenger or driver, dies in the crash, mere misfortune can turn to calamity. And when authorities allege driver intoxication as a contributing cause, the event can feel to the charged driver as if hell has broken loose.

One such late-November 2020 account of a Texas fatal accident alleges that an intoxicated twenty-seven-year-old driver steered her vehicle off a Dallas freeway service road and into a light pole, killing her thirty-three-year-old front-seat passenger. The account reports that when the injured driver's intoxication became apparent at the hospital, police arrested the driver on intoxication-manslaughter charges.

Another report of a recent Texas accident in Houston illustrates a similar kind of DWI-related fatality, in which the allegedly intoxicated driver strikes another vehicle, causing its occupant's death. That report alleges that the intoxicated driver of a truck struck a nineteen-year-old driver's vehicle, ejecting the nineteen-year-old from the vehicle and causing her death. The report further alleges that the truck's intoxicated driver then fled the scene but was promptly apprehended, resulting in DWI and failure-to-stop-and-render-aid charges, pending further potential charges.

Continue Reading ››

 Posted on January 01, 2021 in Uncategorized

The unfortunate report sounds all too familiar: Houston police arresting an allegedly intoxicated woman involved in a fatal hit-and-run accident early Christmas morning. Officers told the media that prosecutors promptly charged the unfortunate 43-year-old suspect with intoxication manslaughter, which is what Texas calls a fatal-accident DWI. The story was unable to identify the male victim.

DWI Hazards for the Holidays

One might think that Christmas wouldn't be a holiday on which to heavily imbibe. Christmas, of all holidays, should be a time for good cheer. But for many, that's not necessarily the case. The holidays, whether Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, or other holidays, are an especially hazardous time relating to intoxicated driving.

Special holiday DWI-enforcement measures prove the holiday-DWI case. Police departments across Texas and the nation focus extra patrols, checkpoints, and other specially funded initiatives around the Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer holidays, everything from Spring Break right on through Memorial Day, Independence Day, and into Labor Day and beyond.

Continue Reading ››

 Posted on January 01, 2021 in Uncategorized

Safely navigating modern America's many high-speed highways can be a challenge given factors like thick fog, darkness, heavy rain, high winds, construction detours, and congested traffic. Overpasses, underpasses, tunnels, bridges, on-and-off ramps, loops, and turnabouts, and a myriad of signs and signals to do this or that, further complicate driving. The large number of accidents year to year proves driving's naturally high risk.

A vehicle operator's constantly changing mental, physical, and emotional condition, including common disabilities, diseases, stresses, and upsets, multiply accident risks. Drivers also vary in their profiles, affecting driving skills and experience. We've all had the disconcerting experience of noticing drivers who can barely see over the driver's wheel or who look like they're still in elementary school, hurtling down the freeway. Hence the bright warning signs on driver's ed vehicles.

Competent drivers can and do make fundamental errors. Lawyers practicing in the personal-injury field see it all the time: great people with great jobs and families make one momentary mistake on the highway, causing a horrific accident. While the public may not see it that way, the justice system's purpose is not merely to compensate or console the victim but also to redeem the momentary wrongdoer, to lift all burdens.

Continue Reading ››

 Posted on December 12, 2020 in Uncategorized

It wasn't the best way to start off November. At 2:30 in the morning, on the first of the month, Hopkins County Sheriff Deputies were sent to investigate a vehicle traveling on I-30. When they arrived on the scene, the vehicle accelerated away from them. According to local news reports, that set off an 11-mile chase across two counties. After they stopped the vehicle, using a "spike strip," deputies brought the driver to a local jail, where he allegedly failed field sobriety tests, and then to a hospital for a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) test. He was subsequently charged with "driving while intoxicated" (DWI) with an open container and felony evading arrest.

Cases that involve both a DWI and a charge of evading an arrest are common, but they are difficult to defend, so it's important to have a DWI Specialist at your side.

Continue Reading ››

 Posted on December 12, 2020 in Uncategorized

How, you might wonder, could a polite little offer of consideration hurt? The answer is plenty, when the intent is to convince an officer making a vehicle stop to forgo a DWI charge. Don't add a daunting bribery charge to a manageable DWI violation. Don't make things go from winnable to potentially worse.

This December 2020 media account of an Alamo resident's alleged actions supplies our instructional example. According to the report, a McAllen police officer wrote in his probable-cause affidavit that he stopped the Alamo resident's vehicle along McAllen's Houston Avenue and confronted him outside the vehicle after the vehicle sped through two red lights. The report alleges the officer smelled alcohol on the vehicle operator whose slurred speech, bloodshot eyes, and admission of a little drinking led the officer to an open alcohol container in the vehicle.

Continue Reading ››

 Posted on December 12, 2020 in Uncategorized

Every year has its big DWI stories, and the year 2020 has been no exception. The pandemic seems to lead almost every 2020 headline, and DWI coverage is no exception. But 2020 has had its share of other big DWI stories. In this blog series, we will review what 2020's top Texas DWI stories can teach us about defending DWI charges.

The Pandemic Shuffles DWI Trends

Wow, what a difference a global pandemic can make. The 2020 coronavirus pandemic turned upside down industry after industry and trend after trend. Cruise ships, airlines, theaters, resorts, and restaurants shut down in droves, trashing those industries. By contrast, online retailers, video-conferencing services, delivery services, and a lot of big tech companies had solid if not banner years. And the stock market miraculously bounced back to records.

Big pandemic-driven economic patterns influenced these and other industry dynamics. For instance, the pandemic ended the longest U.S. economic expansion on record, longer than a decade. The pandemic produced the largest U.S. economic quarterly contraction on record, shrinking the economy by 9.1%. For perspective, that economic contraction was three times larger than the previous largest contraction. The U.S. lost over 20-million jobs in the contraction. Household spending plummeted but over the summer regained its lost ground.

Continue Reading ››

 Posted on December 12, 2020 in Uncategorized

The prior 2020 Texas big DWI story addressed the concerning spread of a new but unreliable oral-fluid technology from which to infer blood-alcohol levels. Nationally recognized DWI specialist Doug Murphy stays on top of these trends to ensure that those charged with DWI offenses have the best representation. Consider here another 2020 Texas-DWI development affecting how Texas authorities process DWI charges.

The year 2020 in Texas marked something of a DWI watershed as the first full year of DWI deferred adjudications. In 2019, the Texas legislature adopted HB 3582 opening a longstanding Texas deferred-adjudication program to certain DWI offenders. Texas courts hearing DWI charges may now hold certain first-time DWI offenders' confession to the charge, allowing the offender to complete a diversion program, after which the court dismisses the charge. The broader Texas diversion program had been on the books for decades but closed to DWI offenders. The amendment opening diversion to DWI offenders took effect September 1, 2019, making 2020 its first full year of implementation.

Continue Reading ››

 Posted on December 12, 2020 in Uncategorized

If a "driving while intoxicated" (DWI) accident involves injury, that can result in increased penalties, but what happens if the DWI results in an injury to a police officer? That is the scenario posed by a recent incident in the Sunnyside area of Houston. According to an ABC13 news report, a driver allegedly failed to yield while making a right turn, striking a southbound police cruiser. The officer driving the cruiser was said to have been taken to the hospital for treatment of minor injuries. The police were reportedly investigating the crash as a DWI.

How does an officer's injury impact a DWI charge?

If DWI results in serious bodily injury, that can be charged as an intoxication assault. While that is usually a third-degree felony, if the injured person is a police officer , then it's enhanced to a first-degree felony, with possible penalties of a 5-99 year prison sentence and a fine of up to $10,000.

Continue Reading ››

 Posted on December 12, 2020 in Uncategorized

The prior big 2020 Texas DWI story had to do with how the pandemic roiled the pattern of DWI violations and prosecutions, specifically in the Houston area. Everyone knows that 2020 has been unlike any other year, which has been just as true for DWI prosecutions.

Another big 2020 DWI story is the continuing advance of DWI technologies affecting the incidence of DWI violations and repeat offenses. Late 2019 saw federal legislation introduced to require by 2024 that motor vehicles have advanced alcohol-detection devices preventing the vehicle from starting if the operator had illegal blood-alcohol levels. That federal legislation would vastly broaden current state laws requiring certain DWI offenders to install such devices on any operated vehicle.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given everything else going on politically in 2020, the federal legislation did not advance to become law in 2020. Ignition devices nonetheless made additional advances in 2020. A recent National Conference of State Legislatures report states that several more states in 2020 joined the many states already requiring DWI offenders to install advanced alcohol-detection devices on operated vehicles. Indeed, Texas Transportation Code 521.246 authorizes ignition interlock devices for first-time DWI offenders who wish to retain their driver's license while requiring ignition interlock devices for repeat offenders.

Continue Reading ››