Our State’s highest criminal court recently reversed a marijuana conviction out of Kaufman County Court at Law 2, just in time for 4/20. Whenever I discuss marijuana prohibition I always mention how much court time, prosecutor time, appointed lawyer time, police time and tax dollars we waste we waste prosecuting…
The Supreme Court heard arguments in McNeely vs Missouri this week. The issue was whether the 4th Amendment’s requirement for a warrant actually applies to DWI blood draws. The defendant in Mcneely refused to give a breath specimen, so the police just held him down and took his blood, which…
You know, I can be pretty hard of appellate decisions I don’t agree with. One of my main sources of blog inspiration is outrage at the loss of civil liberties through appellate decisions. It’s only fair that I point out when our State’s highest criminal court does something right, and…
Today the Dallas Court of Appeals reversed a sexual assault of a child conviction. The case is Wiseman vs. State. This case highlights the limits of expert testimony on the issue of honesty. Basically, an expert can’t offer an opinion that certain groups of people lie, or certain groups tell…
What happens when an inmate sues the sheriff for open records information? Today’s case of the day is In Re Brian Edwards Johnson- In 2008 Brian Edwards Johnson was incarcerated in the Kaufman County jail and sustained an injury. Not sure why he was in jail, or what the injury…
A Kaufman County conviction for Failure to Register as a Sex Offender was reversed last week for factual insufficiency. Basically, it appears the State indicted the defendant under the wrong section of the code of criminal procedure. Factual insufficiency reversals are pretty rare, so let’s walk through how the court…
I’m amazed on how banal DWI blood warrants have become. Maybe I shouldn’t be. Look how far we’ve come in just a few shorts years. The TSA molests plane passengers without cause, and it’s largely a non-issue. The police can demand that you give them your blood, and few seem…
Here’s a paragraph that makes my libertarian blood boil. So, while the initial stop itself was illegal (emphasis mine), Grijalva never went beyond the bounds of what would have been constitutionally permissible had the stop in fact been justified at its inception. Under these circumstances, applying the law, as we…
One reason Texas convicts so many innocent people is our lax standards for allowing the State to admit “scientific” evidence at trial. Given the State’s nearly limitless resources for experts, supply is racing to catch up with demand, whether or not the science is sound or not. Trial courts are…
I often have a hard time quickly explaining to my non-lawyer friends exactly how the appeals system is stacked against criminal defendants. Fortunately today’s case, Barnes vs. State, crystallizes how the constitutional rights of defendants are effectively waived through nonsense technicalities. It’s a Kaufman County Drug case, appealed to the…