I read a good article in the Dallas Morning News earlier this year about the DWI surcharge, and whether the Texas legislature would have the brains to end this failed program. Unintended consequences should always be thoroughly considered before levying a huge “surcharge” on driver’s licenses. I guess it’s kind…
Concerned citizen Jim Wolfe wrote a tart letter to the editor of the Sherman Herald Democrat that he is “Fed up with Van Alstyne police”. I found the letter amusing as the most complaints of any small-town department that I know if in north Texas come from Van Alstyne. They…
The great “hidden fee” of DWI convictions, which neither the prosecutor nor the judge will tell you when one of them tries to talk you into pleading guilty without a lawyer, is the $1,000 to $2,000 a year “surcharge” tax you will pay for three years to keep your right…
In the middle of this sea of injustice is the lonely, scared, powerless citizen branded “defendant” by the system. The citizen has been accused of a crime he hasn’t committed and knows nothing about crime or law or justice or defending himself. In our society, an accusation goes a long…
Often I get asked how I can defend people accused of heinous crimes, or even small crimes. How can you defend criminals? How can you defend the guilty (as if everyone trapped in our justice system is guilty)? Normally this question comes from somebody looking down their nose and implying…
His first performance of self-mutilation not being enough, Sherman, Texas death row inmate Andre Thomas pulled out his last remaining eye and ate it. They say he said it tasted like fish. This raised an interesting and academic question of the propriety of his future death, scheduled to be brought…
Federal law, especially 18 U.S.C. section 922, provides additional limitations on where you can carry. First, it outlaws a person “knowingly to possess a firearm that has moved in or that otherwise affects interstate or foreign commerce at a place that the individual knows, or has reasonable cause to believe,…
If you are convicted at trial, but the court in which your case is heard is not a “court of record,” i.e. there is not a court reporter present and dictating the record for review on appeal, you have the right to force a new trial in its entirety in…
It is in the news daily that guns and ammunition are selling at record rates. This article is to help you understand some of the current law regarding your right to bear arms, primarily the places you are not allowed to carry in Texas. Concealed license holders have a more…
A million words have been written about Andre Thomas, the Sherman, Texas death row inmate whose brutal act of capital murder I will not describe here. Needless to say, infant children and their mother were killed by knife in about as grotesque of a manner possible. However, a million words…