In response to the discussion of DWI (sorry, Windy, in Texas if you're a grownup it's DWI; DUI is the crime someone under 21 commits when he drives with any alcohol in his system) that started here, Chicago's Windy Pundit gives us the numerical rundown on the real danger of DWI: Drunk driving isn't as dangerous as they'd like you to believe. In 2006 according to numbers

Austin criminal-defense lawyer Jamie Spencer is collating a list of all criminal law blogs publishing regularly. Drop in on Jamie and give him the names and URLs of the criminal law blogs you read.

Victim-worshipping commenters on my profile in this morning's Houston Chronicle are fixated on whether DWI is a victimless crime. Fortunately, the vast majority of incidents of driving while intoxicated have no victims; they don't even result in a trip to jail. The victimocrats overclaim when they say that DWI has a victim. In Texas, crimes are defined by statute. A DWI is, by definition, victimless: it is

In a comment to this post, in which I mentioned that I thought the ±25% margin of error of the Intoxilyzer 5000 was a good reason not to blow if you're arrested for DWI, first-time commenter Scott wrote: Your comment regarding refusing to blow intrigues me, as a green attorney, given the likely loss of driving privileges for one year or more (depending on the state). Do

Last week I wrote about this dog of a DWI case, giving enough information, apparently, that some people were able to identify the prosecutor of whom I wrote. Today I went to court on this DWI case (trial was continued till August) in another court, only to find that the same prosecutor had been transferred to that case and would be prosecuting my client in this DWI

I have a DWI jury trial tomorrow in Harris County. No NLSes; this time it'll be "Full speed ahead!", David Farragut-style. Did you know that the Intoxilyzer-5000's margin of error for an unknown solution (i.e. your breath) is +/- 0.020? That means that if your BrAC is .06 and the machine says .08, it's within the margin of error. If that doesn't convince you not to blow

Having seen my website rise to the top of the Houston Criminal Lawyer, Houston Criminal Defense, Houston Criminal Defense Lawyers, and texas Criminal Lawyer Google organic search results, I have a few thoughts for other criminal-defense lawyers who recognize that potential clients aren't looking in the yellow pages anymore.First, you don't have to spend money on search engine optimization (SEO) or even on website design. For these

Texas Counties with Criminal Case Information Online: Brazoria County, Texas Criminal Case Search by Defendant Name Brazos County, Texas Criminal Case Search by Defendant Name Collin County, Texas Criminal Case Search (H/T Lars Isaacson) Dallas County, Texas Criminal Background Search Dallas County Jail Inmate Lookup (H/T Lars Isaacson) Denton County, Texas Criminal Case Search Denton County, Texas Jail Inmate Lookup (H/T Lars Isaacson) Fort Bend County, Texas

Lewisville, Texas federal criminal-defense lawyer Lars Isaacson (my erstwhile second-chair, who learned from me how to take a severe beating, if nothing else) has posted a page of court and jail contact information (telephone numbers, URLs) for state and federal criminal cases in the Dallas area -- Denton, Dallas, Collin, and Tarrant Counties and the Northern and Eastern Districts of Texas. It's lots of handy information for

I wrote last month about Laurence Gonzales's Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why and promised "much more later." It occurs to me that the start of scavenging Gonzales's work for criminal trial lawyers has to be relating survival to a criminal trial. When Gonzales is talking about survival situations, he's not referring only to life-threatening situations but, more broadly, to stressful situations. Some people function