Articles Posted in Violent Crimes

In a recent opinion from a Texas court, the defendant’s motion to suppress was denied. Originally, the defendant was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and aggravated assault. He appealed, arguing that the prosecutor’s use of evidence from the black box in his car was unwarranted. The court disagreed, sustaining the original verdict.

The Facts of the Case

According to the opinion, the defendant was driving one of his friends when he sped around a curve and lost control of his car. Immediately, the defendant crashed into a tree, and his friend died due to injuries sustained in the crash. Investigating the case, police officers obtained a search warrant to recover the defendant’s black box event data recorder. According to police officers, this black box would tell them important information on the car’s speed both at and before the crash itself.

While preparing for trial, the defendant argued that the officers should not have been allowed to seize the car’s black box – it was a violation of his right to privacy. The trial court denied this motion and proceeded with trial. Eventually, a jury heard all of the evidence and concluded that the defendant was guilty of homicide and aggravated assault because of his reckless driving.

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In a recent opinion from a Texas court, a defendant’s request to suppress incriminating evidence was denied. The defendant had been previously found guilty of murder, and part of the evidence used against him in court was gunshot residue (sometimes called GSR) found in his vehicle. The defendant tried to argue that the GSR was improperly used as evidence because the detective who found the GSR did not obtain a warrant, specifically stating that he was going to be searching for GSR in the vehicle. The court denied this argument, affirming the lower court’s judgment and denying the defendant’s appeal.

The Facts of the Case

According to the opinion, a shooting occurred one morning in January 2018 outside of the victim’s apartment complex. The victim’s wife heard gunshots and found her husband dead outside of their apartment, but the shooter ran away before she was able to see him.

The defendant quickly became the main suspect in the police department’s investigation of the crime. Other apartment complex residents described the shooter and the shooter’s vehicle to detectives, which led investigators to the defendant himself. There was also testimonial evidence presented that the defendant and the victim had been arguing at work the day before the shooting, which gave detectives reason to believe the defendant had a motive to commit the crime. Other witnesses told police officers that before he lost consciousness, the victim had been uttering a name to people around him that sounded like the defendant’s first name.

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In a recent opinion from a Texas court involving charges of domestic violence, the defendant’s request for a new verdict was denied. The defendant was found guilty of the second-degree felony offense of family violence assault by impeding the normal breathing of his girlfriend, as well as the third-degree felony offense of family violence. At trial, the prosecution argued that the defendant kept his girlfriend from being able to appear and testify in court. On appeal, the defendant said that this information was false and that he did not keep his girlfriend from coming to trial. The court disagreed and affirmed the guilty verdict.

The Facts of the Case

According to the opinion, police officers went to the defendant’s home after a neighbor called 911 to report domestic violence. Upon arrival, the officers knocked on the defendant’s door; the defendant, who was sweeping up glass from the living room floor, said that he and his girlfriend were “just getting into it.” The defendant’s girlfriend, on the other hand, reported to the officers that she and her boyfriend had argued and he had assaulted her. According to the defendant’s girlfriend, the defendant had punched her in the stomach and struck her with a broom ten times on the shoulders. When she ran outside, the defendant hit her in the head and pulled her into the house by her hair. At the end of the incident, she had red marks on her throat, bruising on her left arm, and a broken blood vessel in her eye.

Leading up to trial, investigators repeatedly tried to serve the defendant’s girlfriend with papers saying she had to appear in court. When they tried to deliver the papers, the defendant claimed that he and his girlfriend were no longer a couple and that he could not do anything to help the investigators locate her. Later, the investigators learned that the defendant and his girlfriend were still, in fact, together, despite what the defendant had claimed when the investigators asked for his help.

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