Dennis Elias’s Latest Tweet :. Injustice News Twitter Feed :.Mark Bennett | September 22, 2009
I spent the weekend in trial mode, preparing for a DWI trial in Montgomery County, north of Houston. This would’ve been only my second trial in a slow year for jury trials (the first ended in an acquittal; several others have been dismissed on the eve of trial) and my client’s career was at stake, [...]
Mark Bennett | August 4, 2009
Harris County Assistant District Attorney Roger Bridgwater has said of the DWI DIVERT (“Direct Intervention using Voluntary Education Restitution and Treatment”, I am reliably informed, and not “maybe this will make the voters love us“, as I suggested before) program: What happens if someone tests positive for alcohol while on diversion? The program is zero [...]
Mark Bennett | July 30, 2009
Prosecutors, do you want to learn about the new DIVERT program that your office adopted without consulting with you? Defense lawyers, do you want to learn about the ethics of ex parte agreements with judges about minimum sentences in DWI cases? Incumbent judges,* do you want to find out who is going to support your [...]
Mark Bennett | July 29, 2009
It’s against my nature to continue letting Houston DWI lawyer Paul Kennedy pick the low-lying fruit of the Harris County DA’s new DIVERT (the acronym, as I understand it, stands for “maybe this will make the voters love us”) DWI diversion program. This program is prosecutor Roger Bridgwater’s baby. I believe Roger’s heart is in [...]
Mark Bennett | July 16, 2009
Houston DWI attorney Paul Kennedy reports: A citizen confronted with a first-time DWI will be offered pretrial diversion (if eligible) or 30 days in the county jail. The other option is to ask the judge for probation without a recommendation from the prosecutor.. . . .Said an unnamed source, “the plan is to force people [...]
Mark Bennett | June 12, 2009
The Harris County District Attorney’s Office has not had time to talk to the defense bar about the outlines of the new pretrial diversion program for first-time DWI offenders, but it has had time to talk to the press (enough to convince the Chronicle’s editors, clueless about criminal procedure, to endorse it), and now to [...]
Mark Bennett | June 6, 2009
My old friend Mr. X, the Deep Throat of the DA’s Office, does not like DA Lykos’s proposal to offer pretrial diversion to people charged with first DWIs. He writes: Let’s assume the pretrial diversions will be expungeable because the way that Lykos has talked about them they’ll be more like pretrial interventions where charges [...]
Mark Bennett | June 4, 2009
In Harris County, Texas, between January 1, 2009 and May 31, 2009: 3,166 DWI defendants pled guilty or no contest. 1 defendant pled not guilty to the judge and was convicted. 38 people pled not guilty to juries and were convicted. 22 people pled not guilty to juries and were acquitted by jury verdict. 6 [...]
Mark Bennett | December 29, 2008
HPD Officer Paul Lassalle comments on this long-ago post about his communications with Harris County Assistant District Attorney Warren Diepraam (who will likely be at the coronation on Thursday) concerning whether HPD has to actually use the videotaping equipment that the statute requires them to have and maintain. When a man with a gun and [...]
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