Posted on February 02, 2020 in Uncategorized

Former Dallas Cowboy and Oakland Raider running back Darren McFadden was sentenced to four days in jail on February 20, 2020, in a Collin County courtroom. A two-time runner up for the Heisman Trophy, McFadden was arrested for driving while intoxicated (DWI) and resisting arrest in McKinney, Texas in January 2019.

According to media reports, McFadden was arrested after falling asleep in the driver's seat of a 2019 GMC Yukon in the drive-thru of a McKinney Whataburger. When employees inside the restaurant noticed McFadden asleep in the drive-thru line, they called police.

Upon arriving at the scene, police made contact with McFadden while he was still in his vehicle in the drive-thru. According to police, McFadden refused to exit his vehicle and a struggle ensued. During the course of the struggle, media reports suggest the driver's side window of McFadden's vehicle was broken.

After taking McFadden into custody, police charged him with DWI and resisting arrest. In the time since, the case has worked its way through the criminal justice system. On February 20, McFadden pled guilty as part of a negotiated plea bargain. McFadden agreed to serve four days in county jail as his penalty for the DWI conviction. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to dismiss the charge of resisting arrest.

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 Posted on February 02, 2020 in Uncategorized

In a conspiracy that spanned from the Houston area to rural Kentucky, a Texas-based doctor and his associates are facing charges of conspiracy to commit Medicare fraud charges related a series of kickbacks and false billing claims.

All told, the scheme involved an alleged $470,000 in kickbacks related to urine testing referrals from the doctor to the owner of the Texas laboratory involved in the scheme. If convicted, the penalties for all parties involved could include up to five years in federal prison per offense.

The Conspiracy

The conspiracy was fairly complex. Doctor Ghyasuddin Syed owned and operated a pain management clinic. The clinic was in a building owned by Syed and operated by his wife Shazan Behum.

Allegedly beginning in 2014, this conspiracy also included Texas businessman Uday Shah. Shah was the owner of a series of drug-testing labs located in Texas, Kentucky, Ohio, and Nevada.

The conspiracy allegedly involved Syed referring out urine tests to labs owned by Shah for testing. In exchange for this business, Shah made cash payments to Syed in a variety of ways. One of the methods used in the scheme involved Shah renting laboratory space in the building owned by Syed. Shah then used these rent payments in an effort to disguise the kickbacks. According to federal authorities, the space in Syed's building was not used as a lab by Shah, and the conspirators moved equipment into the building so that it would appear to be legitimate when federal investigators sought to interview the doctor.

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 Posted on February 02, 2020 in Uncategorized

The deferred action for childhood arrivals program, or DACA, provides legal status certain undocumented individuals that were brought to this country as children but have lived here most of their lives. While the future of the program is uncertain, court orders have held the system in stasis for now.

For anyone currently in the DACA program, they must comply with certain requirements and re-apply for the program each year. One of the most important requirements for DACA relates to criminal records.

A criminal conviction for a serious offense like a federal crime or a state felony is likely to result in the cancellation of a person's DACA status. The outcome of a conviction for a misdemeanor is not as clear. Not all misdemeanors are treated equally under the law. This includes charges of driving while intoxicated.

Significant Misdemeanors

Only misdemeanors that are categorized as "significant" will result in denial of a DACA renewal. Federal guidelines are somewhat broad on what defines a significant misdemeanor, other than it includes any crime that carries a penalty between five days and one year in jail. However, the guidelines do list six distinct types of offenses that are always treated as significant misdemeanors. DWI is one of those six offenses. This is true even if the resulting conviction does not lead to a jail sentence.

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 Posted on February 02, 2020 in Uncategorized

There is nothing new or novel about the crime of money laundering. For years, federal authorities have aggressively pursued attempts to conceal the illegal origin of money by those who obtain it. What is new, however, is the use of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin to facilitate these illegal transactions.

In recent years, Bitcoin has become a popular avenue for money laundering. State and federal authorities appear to be taking steps to pursue those exploiting the anonymous nature of cryptocurrencies for this purpose. In 2019, New York made its first arrests for funneling millions of dollars in illegal steroid sales through Bitcoin before exchanging it for dollars.

What is Bitcoin?

To understand how Bitcoin could be used for money laundering, it is first helpful to understand how Bitcoin operates. Created in 2008 by an unknown person or group of people, Bitcoin rose to prominence as a decentralized digital currency. Transferring Bitcoin can be done using peer-to-peer networks, making the use of intermediaries like banks unnecessary.

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 Posted on January 01, 2020 in Uncategorized

After more than five months of litigation, WWE Superstar Jimmy Uso (real name: Joshua Fatu) was acquitted of driving while intoxicated charges in Escambia County, Florida. The trial followed an arrest outside of Pensacola, Florida on July 25, 2019.

Prior History

This marks a string of close calls for Uso, as this arrest was his third for DWI. To date, he has yet to be convicted of any of those charges. His previous arrests occurred in 2011 and 2013, all in the state of Florida.

These do not account for all of Uso's arrests. In February of 2019, he was also arrested in the Detroit area following an altercation with police during a traffic stop. Video of the stop shows Uso getting out of the vehicle driven by his wife after police asked to speak with her outside of the vehicle. Uso approached them aggressively and refused to heed their orders. Eventually, he complied after officers pulled their tasers.

In that incident, Uso was charged with disorderly conduct among other charges. He eventually pled no contest to a lesser charge and paid a fine. Jimmy's twin brother, Jey Uso, is also no stranger to these types of chargers. He was arrested for DWI in Texas in January of 2018.

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 Posted on January 01, 2020 in Uncategorized

Breathalyzers, a/k/a breath test machines, are known for inaccurate reporting. The equipment must be calibrated on a regular basis and the test must be administered appropriately but mistakes are often made. Even then, when no errors are present, the devices can still return a false positive.

Compounding this problem is now accusations of fraud, but not by persons you would think, like persons who have been charged with DWI due to faulty breathalyzers. Making the claims of fraud is the Michigan State Police Department.

This particular story doesn't take place in Houston or even Texas for that matter, but it still serves as a reminder that just because a breathalyzer renders a result indicating you are illegally intoxicated does not mean that it is true but does mean you should fight the DWI charge.

Police in Michigan Blame Fraud for Hundreds of Defective Breathalyzers

Lansing, Michigan and the surrounding area has the highest rate of DWI arrests and convictions in the state. By far, the majority of those cases have been built on breathalyzer test results that indicate a driver was intoxicated. Now, the state has accused the company contracted to test and calibrate these machines with fraud – and taken more than 200 of the breathalyzers out of service. Questions remain about how many of the thousands of arrests resulting from these breath tests were built on false readings.

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 Posted on January 01, 2020 in Uncategorized

In the early morning hours of New Years' Day 2020, a Bryan, Texas woman was placed under arrest for driving while intoxicated. The arrest occurred after her vehicle was discovered to have crashed through the side of a house. When the police arrived on the scene, the woman was still behind the wheel.

According to media reports, 61-year-old Deborah Lockledge was both the owner of the vehicle and behind the wheel at the time of the crash. She was alone in the car when the police arrived.

The police report states Lockledge claimed to have fallen ill while driving. She attempted to pull over to the side of the road but lost control of the vehicle, slamming into the side of a home on Carter Creek Parkway in Bryan. The car smashed through the wall and into the home, but no one inside suffered injuries.

Suspicion of DWI

According to the police report, law enforcement suspected intoxication immediately. Ms. Lockledge admitted to having a glass of wine shortly before midnight before heading home. The responding officers reported she seemed disoriented, could not remember what happened, and struggled to provide identification. (But remember, after a crash like this, you are bound to be disoriented and confused.)

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 Posted on January 01, 2020 in Uncategorized

Drivers accused of a DWI in Houston typically learn two important things during their initial consultation with a DWI defense attorney. The first is that a DWI charge carries steep maximum penalties. The second is that in many cases, it is possible to avoid serving anything close to the maximum penalties if convicted. A Brazos County man recently learned that leniency is never guaranteed.

On January 8, 2020, the Brazos County District Attorney's Office announced a guilty plea for DWI was entered by 58-year-old Charles Dutcher. Under the terms of the plea bargain, the court sentenced Dutcher to 25 years in state prison. This DWI conviction marks Dutcher's 6^th DWI arrest over the course of his life. His arrests stretch back to 1995, with his most recent DWI conviction coming in 2011.

The arrest that led to this guilty plea stemmed from a brief police chase in April 2017. According to the police report, Brazos County sheriff's deputies noticed Dutcher driving with a defective tail light. The report reflects that Dutcher fled after the deputies attempted to pull him over. Dutcher reportedly accelerated to more than 100 miles per hour, even driving on the wrong side of the road to avoid capture. Dutcher ran several stop signs before law enforcement cornered him on a dead-end road. The police report went on to say that the deputies subdued him by force after he refused to cooperate.

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 Posted on January 01, 2020 in Uncategorized

A typical arrest for driving while intoxicated involves a law enforcement officer pulling a driver over and concluding the driver was under the influence of drugs or alcohol. That is not always the case, however. On the afternoon of January 21, 2020, a New York man was arrested and charged with DWI while sleeping in a parked car.

Police in Lake Luzerne, New York, responded to complaints of a reckless driver in the late afternoon hours of January 21. The callers reported a driver weaving in traffic and traveling in the opposite lane. The caller was able to describe the car and driver, which led police to track down 53-year-old John V. Mattison parked in front of a nearby private residence.

According to the police report, when officers approached the vehicle, Mattison was asleep behind the wheel. When the police roused Mattison, they immediately suspected that he was under the influence of alcohol. Ultimately, law enforcement placed Mattison under arrest for DWI and transported him to jail. In custody, a breath sample reflected that Mattison's blood alcohol concentration (BAC) was 0.22 percent. This is close to three times the legal limit in the State of New York.

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 Posted on January 01, 2020 in Uncategorized

Most drivers are familiar with the standardized field sobriety tests. Individually, these tests include the walk-and-turn, the one-legged stand, and horizontal gaze nystagmus tests. These tests are problematic under the best circumstances even when just used to detect alcohol intoxication, but they have no scientific basis or validity for testing for drugs.

As states steadily move toward legalizing marijuana, law enforcement faces additional issues with field sobriety testing. The standardized field sobriety tests were created with alcohol in mind and are of limited use when marijuana is suspected. Another, non-standardized, field sobriety test that some law enforcement agencies are turning to with marijuana DWI cases is known as the Romberg Balance Test.

Understanding the Modified Romberg Balance Test

The first thing to note about the Romberg Balance Test is that its purpose is not to measure a person's balance. The Romberg Test requires a person suspected of DWI to:

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