The courts of Midland County are imposing new alcohol monitoring restrictions during pre-trial for those who are facing a 2nd offense DWI conviction. These monitoring systems include ignition interlock devices, which stop your car from starting if you have consumed alcohol, and SCRAM (Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor) ankle bracelets, which monitor any alcohol levels in the bloodstream in real time.

Under Texas criminal law, pre-trial courts can impose restrictions as a condition of bail. The cost to the defendant for the use of these devices is around $75/month for an ignition interlock, and $300/month for a SCRAM bracelet. Midland county pretrial courts now have 5 scram units in use, and are looking to acquire more so they can monitor more defendants.

If you are facing a 2nd offense DWI charge in Texas, you are in need of immediate legal help to figure out what do you next. Please contact us for our free DWI defense consultation and case evaluation.

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Update:

Many counties are using Auto Ignition Interlock Alcohol Devices in second offense DWI cases. SCRAM bracelets are also being used in Travis County, and by many other Texas county pretrial courts.

An initially successful appeal of a DWI conviction was overturned by the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals. The issue at hand for a DWI case from Harlingen, TX  in Cameron county was that of the Right to a Speedy Trial, as guaranteed by the 6th amendment of the US Constitution.

The DWI charges were not forwarded to the DA for more than a year after the man was arrested in March 2003. The original judge in the case denied the motion to dismiss on the speedy trial grounds. The defendant pleaded guilty at the time (October 2004). However, the 13th court of appeals overturned that conviction in Feb 2007, reversing the results of the plea.

The judge Texas Criminal Court of Appeals determined that the appeals court was incorrect in overturning the conviction after analyzing the 4 elements of a speedy trial violation claim: length of delay, reason for delay, assertion of the right and prejudice to the accused.

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Appeals cases are a specialized area of the law.  If you are facing a current DWI charge in Texas, please contact us for a consultation. Or if you are interested in appealing a DWI conviction, we can help you, but you only have a very limited time to challenge a conviction result via an appeal. so do not delay.

In a clear blow against logic, rational public policy, disease prevention and costs to the public, a needle exchange program in Bexar county (San Antonio) was declared to violate Texas’ drug paraphernalia laws.

Texas legislators who support the program hope to fix the law to allow these programs. Studies have show that needle exchanges clearly help reduce disease transmission in at risk populations of addicted drug users.

Officers in Lubbock, Texas are enforcing mandatory blood tests for those who refuse to take a breath test after a DWI.

If you refuse to take a breath test, they will immediately take you to a medical facility as they process a warrant to extract your blood to test your BAC (blood alcohol content) to determine if you are over the legal limit for alcohol in your bloodstream while driving (aka DWI, driving while intoxicated in Texas).

Typically, a judge will approve the warrant.

This is certainly a questionable invasion of your rights to privacy, self-incrimination, and other serious constitutional issues.

Texas Defense attorneys argue that you have a clear right to refuse to take a breathalyzer test under the law, and this circumvents that right. Although it is true that under Texas’ implied consent laws, the DMV has the right to suspend your driver’s license for the refusal, as per your agreement as a condition of being a licensed driver in Texas.

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If you are facing a DWI in Texas, contact us for a legal case evaluation and free consultation on your defense options.

Teachers in Austin are also being subjected to background checks, similar those Texas nurses have been undergoing.

The landscape has clearly changed for the standards of criminal record checks in Texas and nationwide.

These checks are standard for all new hires, and as the news reports indicate, many public sector employees are being subjected to historical checks for all existing employees.

Consider what will happen when you apply for a job, and are considered one of a few leading, highly-qualified candidates. If the hiring decision comes down to you, with a mistake in your past, for which you plead guilty to a criminal charge, and someone with no criminal conviction - who do you think an employer is likely to choose?

A criminal record for a minor charge as a young person may not have mattered much back when that information was buried in a courtroom file. But everything is easily available electronically now, and will become even more searchable in the future.

Contact our Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers for advice on how you can avoid a criminal record if you are charged with a criminal offense in Texas.

A news article on criminal background checks in Texas on nurses found that 1 in 20 have some incident on their criminal record. Some of these incidents may be arrests without convictions, or charges that are decades old.

Background checks are commonly done on new hires, but many of the nurses who who checked had been on staff for many years before such checks were common. No doubt many of these nurses have served hospitals with distinction, and helped thousands of patients. Yet, because of a past incident that could be trivial in nature, such a person possibly never would have been hired.

But now that criminal background checks are cheap, simple, and common, you need to consider the future impact of any Texas criminal conviction on your future career opportunities.

Any criminal charge can leave you with a permanent scar with will show up on any background search. And in the future, it is very possible, if not likely, that criminal records could be freely available to all via something as simple as a google search. Criminal court records are considered public information in most cases.