Lawyer in Georgia

  Jury selection issues often come up in Dallas County, where the numerous felony courts are always busy trying serious cases. The Dallas Court of Appeals will resolve those issues. In October, a significant case involving improper jury selection was before the Court of Appeals in Houston. The Houston Court found that the State had engaged in purposeful discrimination during the jury selection process. As a result the defendant's controlled substance conviction was set aside, and a new trial was ordered. The process of jury selection is called voir dire. During voir dire, the prosecution and the defense have a limited number of "strikes"--that is, each side can exclude certain individuals from serving on the jury. This policy has a number of useful functions, but it cannot be used as a pretext for purposeful discrimination. In this case, the defendant was African-American, and the State struck two or three African-American citizens during voir dire. The defendant challeng...

  The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals recently considered the following question: "Does taking photographs at a public pool permit a police officer to detain the photographer, in the name of a police investigation?" This seems like a case that might come out of the family-oriented suburbs in and around Dallas County, but it came from a sparsely-populated county in Southeast Texas near Shiner and Yoakum. In this case, the defendant was seen taking photographs of patrons at a public swimming pool. Police were notified and responded quickly. Based on a description of the defendant's car and its location, an officer was able to determine who the defendant was. After the defendant pulled away in his car, the officer followed him briefly and then initiated a traffic stop. The officer asked for and received consent to look through the photos on the camera. The photos were primarily of women and girls in their swim wear. The defendant was arrested and charges of "improper ph...

  An important case out of the San Antonio area (Bexar County) was decided by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in April 2013. The Court considered whether a police officer was justified in forcibly entering the apartment of a man who possessed marijuana while living with a six-month-old baby. This type of issue will come up across the State of Texas, particularly in urban areas like Dallas, Tarrant, Collin and Denton Counties, and similar cases will probably be decided by the Dallas and Fort Worth Courts of Appeals. When the police were informed of the odor of marijuana coming from the apartment, an officer went to the apartment and knocked on the door. The resident of the apartment cracked open the door, and the officer asked if the six-month-old baby or the baby's mother were at home. The resident answered that neither of them were home, and the officer left. Shortly after that, the officer returned to the apartment with a fellow officer. Believing that if he left to obtain a ...

  This week the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the decision of the Texas Court of Appeals at Dallas in a marijuana case where the defendant was convicted by the District Attorney in Kaufman County. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals decided that, since driving in the left lane without passing was not a traffic violation, the defendant should not have been stopped by a Kaufman County sheriff's deputy. Consequently, there was no basis to search the defendant or his vehicle. The male driver was followed for a mile by the sheriff's deputy, who observed that the driver was staying in the left hand lane, although there were no cars in the right hand land for him to pass. The deputy pulled the driver over and arrested him after discovering marijuana in his possession. The driver was charged with possessing under two ounces of marijuana. The trial court refused to suppress the marijuana as evidence against the driver. Although the driver argued that he did not know the left ...

  An important case out of the San Antonio area (Bexar County) was decided by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in April 2013. The Court considered whether a police officer was justified in forcibly entering the apartment of a man who possessed marijuana while living with a six-month-old baby. This type of issue will come up across the State of Texas, particularly in urban areas like Dallas, Tarrant, Collin and Denton Counties, and similar cases will probably be decided by the Dallas and Fort Worth Courts of Appeals. When the police were informed of the odor of marijuana coming from the apartment, an officer went to the apartment and knocked on the door. The resident of the apartment cracked open the door, and the officer asked if the six-month-old baby or the baby's mother were at home. The resident answered that neither of them were home, and the officer left. Shortly after that, the officer returned to the apartment with a fellow officer. Believing that if he left to obtain a ...

  A decision from the Fourteenth Court of Appeals last week illustrated a problem that plagues the indigent defense system in Texas: the defendant is dissatisfied with his court-appointed lawyer. In this case, the defendant thus tried, ineptly, to represent himself at trial. Of course, a defendant has a constitutional right to have a lawyer represent him for free, but he does not have the choice of which lawyer will represent him unless he can pay the lawyer of his choosing. The defendant in the case from last week received a life sentence. Since a defendant must voluntarily waive his right to be represented by counsel, the argument on appeal was that the trial judge failed to properly warn the defendant about the dangers of self-representation. The defendant argued on appeal that the quality of court-appointed counsel "coerced" him into representing himself. DWI/DUI lawyer . The Court of Appeals rejected this argument, since refusing to allow the defendant to represent hims...

  The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals sent a failure-to-register-as-a-sex-offender case back to the Dallas Court of Appeals last week with instructions for the Court of Appeals to re-decide in view of a decision in a recent case from Tyler, in Smith County, where the Court of Criminal Appeals held that an out-of-state conviction does not trigger the reporting requirements unless it has been considered to be substantially similar to a Texas offense by the Texas Department of Public Safety. In the Dallas case, the Dallas Police Department arrested the defendant because he had been convicted of "sexual battery" in Louisiana. The legal question for the Dallas Court to now decide is whether the Department of Public Safety has made a "substantial similarity" determination with respect to that offense; if not, the conviction should be set aside, according to the majority of the Court of Criminal Appeals. Violent crimes lawyer . The Court of Criminal Appeals instructed the...