Posted on February 02, 2021 in Uncategorized

The reports come one after another: DWI arrests of police officers and military members who one would think would know better. We tend to believe that those who enforce the law shouldn't be breaking the law. But law officers do suffer DWI arrest and charge. And when they do, they face special challenges because of their status.

Consider these two recent examples. The first report highlights the DWI arrest of a Fort Worth officer allegedly sitting asleep in his squad car outside an elementary school. The story shares the foreseeable consequences, even for a police lieutenant with fourteen years of service: transport to jail and, after release and charge, confiscation of gun and badge, and placement on restricted duty.

The second report is of another veteran officer, an off-duty San Angelo police officer, allegedly detained and then arrested in a highway traffic stop for showing signs of intoxication. The report indicates that the DWI charge resulted in an internal investigation with an Office of Professional Standards and the predictable reassignment to desk duty.

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 Posted on February 02, 2021 in Uncategorized

All that it took was years and years of plain old grit. So says the story of a U.S. Navy veteran whom federal immigration authorities deported after a second DWI but who in late 2020 finally won his legal readmission to the U.S. as a naturalized citizen.

The story involves a man who entered the U.S. legally as a six-year-old child to live as a legal permanent resident in El Paso with his immigrant family. The then-young man enlisted in the Navy right out of high school, serving in the early 1990s Persian Gulf War. That wartime service turned out to be fortuitous for the young legal permanent resident because it gave him the right to naturalize as a U.S. citizen. Unfortunately, the young man didn't realize his need to naturalize. Instead, the story reports that he returned to El Paso with a drinking habit from wartime stress.

The man joined the Army National Guard at home in El Paso, where he also worked for the Veterans Administration and as an equipment technician--until he incurred a DWI for which federal authorities deported him across the Rio Grande to Ciudad Juarez. After years of odd jobs across the border, the man snuck back to El Paso to join his wife, kids, and ailing mother, only to incur a second DWI and deportation.

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 Posted on February 02, 2021 in Uncategorized

Most DWI arrests are pretty tame. A few are not. And when a DWI arrest goes bad, it can go really bad. One early 2021 story illustrates the point.

The media report explains that the driver, a Dallas resident, allegedly fled after Grand Prairie police signaled the driver to stop. Police suspected an intoxicated driver because the vehicle was running on a blown-out tire's wheel rim. The driver allegedly made an escape all the way into Dallas on I-20, where police SWAT vehicles finally hemmed the suspect's vehicle in.

The report continues police closed both sides of the freeway for safety while the SWAT team coaxed the allegedly intoxicated driver to give himself up. Fortunately, the driver climbed cautiously out of his vehicle, avoiding a sure-to-be-deadly gunfire exchange. Video accompanying the story shows two armored vehicles nose-and-tail with the suspect's vehicle, while swarms of fatigue-clad SWAT officers escort the lone suspect into the back of a waiting police vehicle, later to face evading-arrest and DWI charges.

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 Posted on February 02, 2021 in Uncategorized

If you're facing a charge for driving while intoxicated that involved damage to public property, you're probably worried about the consequences of a driving while intoxicated (DWI) conviction. But you're probably also concerned about how the damage to city or state property can affect your chances of conviction and any penalties you might face.

In January of 2021, KXXV reported a single-vehicle accident in Bryan, Texas, that closed a major roadway. An allegedly drunk 18-year-old driver left the road and struck multiple utility poles, leaving downed power lines and road obstructions all over W. William Joel Bryan Parkway near North Sims Avenue. After an investigation, police took the 18-year-old into custody and arrested him for driving while intoxicated. Although there were no injuries, the damage to public property was extensive.

DWI Complications

While a first DWI in Texas is a Class B misdemeanor, damaging property can add a wrinkle to the charges. A first DWI can result in up to a $2,000 fine, a mandatory license suspension, and 72 hours to 180 days in jail. The state also charges mandatory fees for a DWI that are not within the discretion of the court. The charge for a first DWI within 36 months is $3,000.

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 Posted on February 02, 2021 in Uncategorized

Oddly, and sadly, intoxicated driving puts highway safety design to the test. Intoxicated drivers get into accidents because of impaired perception and slowed reaction times. The safer the highway design and its lighting, marking, and signage, the less likely an intoxicated driver will cause an accident. The more-dangerous the highway stretch, the more likely the intoxicated driver's impaired perception and slowed reaction times will cause an accident. Police officers come to expect it: drunk drivers getting into accidents right where accidents tend to happen because of confusing highway signage, poor highway markings, or other highway-safety design issues.

A Dangerous Stretch of Highway

One recent reported incident provides a good example of a notoriously bad highway design triggering a DWI arrest. The story reports an early 2021 motor-vehicle crash into a Bryan, Texas RV park, right where residents say high speeds along the dangerous highway make late-night crashes inevitable. "From midnight to 2 a.m., people treat this street like Eldora Speedway," one resident reportedly complained, while expressing hope that city leaders would finally address the highway-safety issue threatening the RV park.

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 Posted on January 01, 2021 in Uncategorized

The New Year's holiday can bring much good cheer--sometimes a little too much good cheer. Two Texas-DWI stories illustrate the problem with imbibing irresponsibly over the holidays.

DWI Enforcement Actions over the Holidays

The first of those stories highlights an annual New Year's Eve joint-agency drunk-driving enforcement action involving both local and Texas state police. This particular enforcement action around the University of Texas's Permian Basin campus in Odessa was one of many around Texas and the nation over the holidays. It led to forty-nine arrests. More than half of those arrests were for driving while intoxicated. That's a lot of holiday bad cheer, especially considering the up to $20,000 cost the story reports can result from a first-time DWI conviction.

The second story again highlights an annual local DWI-enforcement action, this one by Garland police outside Dallas. Stretching across both Christmas and New Year's Eve, the action led to dozens of citations and twenty-six DWI arrests. The story reports that Garland police, like many agencies around Texas and the nation, hold special-enforcement actions around other holidays, too. Although Texas state police were not directly involved in the Garland action, Texas Department of Transportation grants helped fund the extra patrols.

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 Posted on January 01, 2021 in Uncategorized

Attitudes about drunk driving have changed a lot. And when defending a Texas DWI charge, knowing that history can make a difference.

Drunk-driving laws are nearly as old as driving itself. One report cites an 1897 London taxi driver as the first to suffer drunk-driving conviction after ramming his vehicle into a building. New Jersey and New York had drunk-driving laws in the first decade of the 1900s. Other states, including Texas, were not too far behind. The early laws often went unenforced, though, especially because police and prosecutors had no reliable way of proving intoxication.

Drunk-driving laws needed better science to support wider enforcement. The advent in 1936 of a balloon-like drunkometer and in 1953 of the more-refined breathalyzer enabled legislators to define unlawful intoxication in ways that police and prosecutors could more-reliably prove. Drunk-driving laws first adopted the National Safety Council's recommended.15% as the lawful blood-alcohol limit and then, with National Highway Traffic Safety Administration advocacy, gradually lowered those limits to.12% and.10%.

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 Posted on January 01, 2021 in Uncategorized

In October 2020, a woman was driving her motorcycle westbound on FM 1090 when, as she was about to make a left turn, she was allegedly hit by a Cadillac SUV. The woman was taken to a hospital, where she later died. At the scene of the accident, law enforcement then arrested the driver, who was under investigation for "driving while intoxicated" (DWI).

While all DWIs should be taken seriously, a DWI involving a fatality is on a different level than other DWIs. It is a tragedy for everyone concerned.

While the memory of the accident will never fade from view, the trauma often causes people to forget that a DWI charge is not a conviction. Just as with every other criminal charge, you have the right to defend yourself, and the prosecution must prove that you were responsible, beyond a reasonable doubt.

To do so, it's important to have a DWI Specialist at your side.

In a DWI-related fatality, a driver is likely going to be charged with intoxicated manslaughter. That means that the state must prove that a driver was intoxicated at the time of the death, but the state does not need to establish that there was any intent to harm; the charge can include fatalities that arose out of an accident or mistake.

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 Posted on January 01, 2021 in Uncategorized

No doubt, getting pulled over under circumstances where an arrest and criminal charges seem imminent may put your cool head at risk. The stress of a vehicle stop increases when the driver knows that the vehicle contains contraband, illegal weapons, or open intoxicants, or if the driver has recently imbibed alcohol or used drugs. The driver's prior DWI convictions or other criminal history further raise the stakes.

One media report of a vehicle stop gone wrong perfectly illustrates the hazards. The December 2020 story alleges that Texas A & M University police tried to stop the vehicle driver early on a Saturday for a moving violation on a campus street, but the driver refused to stop. When the driver did eventually stop on another street, the story alleges that the driver left the vehicle and ran. Officers pursued and subdued the driver who, the story alleges, resisted arrest, requiring several officers to get the driver into the police vehicle.

The media report hints at the reasons, or perhaps poor excuses, for why the driver may have refused, resisted, and run. The account alleges not only that the driver smelled of alcohol but also had glassy eyes and trouble standing, and two prior Brazos County DWI convictions. The account reports that police transported the driver to the local hospital for a blood test, after which authorities charged the driver with evading arrest in a vehicle and third DWI, both third-degree felonies, a state-jail felony of evading arrest with a prior conviction, and a misdemeanor of driving on an invalid license with a prior conviction.

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 Posted on January 01, 2021 in Uncategorized

A Texas DWI charge is significant to just about anyone, considering the potentially severe short- and long-term consequences. Yet those consequences magnify when the defendant is a Texas public official like Montgomery County Judge Mark Keough, whom the county's Office of District Attorney charged December 8, 2020, with a prescription-drug based DWI relating to a September 10th motor-vehicle accident. The court complaint alleges that Judge Keough had the misfortune of striking not just one but two vehicles, the second of which was a deputy constable's cruiser.

It's not that the interests and concerns of public officials are any more important than for the rest of us. We all matter, at least to our families, our employers, and ourselves. The issue is that the public rightly holds officials like judges to higher standards. A DWI charge is embarrassing for anyone, but it can entirely derail a public official's career, especially one serving in the justice system that hears and decides such charges. Judge Keough, like any public official in his position, has a lot riding on the charge's outcome.

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