Category Archives: Texas Government Watch

Prosecutorial Misconduct in Texas Alert: Ethical Rules Held to Have Broader Duty Than Brady to Turn Over Exculpatory Evidence to the Defense

Back in November 2014, a State Bar of Texas Grievance Committee ruled that a Denton County assistant district attorney named William (”Bill”) Schultz had violated the ethical rules that all Texas attorneys are sworn to uphold.  Not only that, but more: he had committed a serious ethics violation and his unethical conduct deserved suspension from…


Year in Review: Things for Dallas to Consider From a Criminal Defense Perspective

How Dangerous is It to Live or Work in Dallas County? Here we are at the end of another year. Let’s take a minute and consider where things stand as we enter 2016, from a North Texas Criminal Defense perspective: 1. Dallas County Is Really, Really Dangerous As reported by Grits for Breakfast this week,…


Heroin in Dallas: 5 Things About Dallas’ Heroin Market from the New DEA Report

Heroin use in Texas isn’t news, but the increasing use of this particularly notorious drug — and the skyrocketing number of drug overdose deaths in our state and across the country — is really getting newsworthy. Search the news, or just search for “heroin” in Twitter, and you’ll find stories from all over the country…


Former Dallas Criminal Judge Etta Mullin Gets Bigger Discipline After She Appeals Public Admonition by Judicial Commission

Around the hallways of the Dallas County Courthouse, you can hear many a war story about appearing in the courtroom of Dallas County Criminal Court No. 5 when the Honorable Etta Mullin presided on its bench. If you didn’t have your own personal experience to share, there were lots of criminal defense lawyers (and other…


Fighting to Stop Asset Forefeiture by Police Isn’t That Easy

You know that the issue of asset forfeiture is a big deal in this country when it’s reported that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), FreedomWorks, Americans for Tax Reform, the Center for American Progress, and the Faith and Freedom Coalition — among others — have joined together in their efforts to stop the practice…


Five Big Changes in Texas Criminal Laws

For Texas lawmakers, it’s all done now — the 2015 Legislative Session is finished, and for all of us Texans, now we deal with what happened down in Austin this year as the dust settles. The Texas Tribune has compiled a complete list of the new laws, civil and criminal, into an online list if…


Open Carry of Handguns in Texas: Get Ready

You may assume that it’s not allowed anywhere in the United States for an ordinary citizen to carry their gun openly in public display, but you’re wrong if you do. It’s not. In fact, it’s strange but true that until this month Texas (that’s right, Texas!) was one of only a few states (the others…


Police Cameras: Things to Know Before Filming Texas Police in Action

The power of the people to film or photograph police doing bad things — and then sharing those videos or photographs online in social media like Twitter or YouTube — is undeniable. From the use of smartphones, just last week we saw the police officer shooting a man in the back over in South Carolina….


Dallas D.A. Forfeiture Funds: The Temptation of All That Stuff and the Craig Watkins Scandal

Here in Dallas, more and more people are aware of how government authorities have been seizing property from people without sufficient judicial process and keeping those assets for their own uses. This is good because forfeiture is a big problem that not enough folk realize exists. We’ve been discussing this problem — the problem of…


Synthetic Drugs Law: Will New Texas Law Succeed in Outlawing Spice, K2, and Other Synthetic Highs?

Here in Texas, law enforcement and the Texas Legislature are trying hard to keep up with the growing market for synthetic marijuana and designer drugs that are being sold all around the state in shops as well as online on legal web sites. Synthetic marijuana, for example, is sold as an easy to get alternative…