Category: News
Security concerns about criminal suspects have been raised in Dallas after a capital murder suspect escaped from Parkland Memorial Hospital. According to a report in the Dallas Morning News, a lone deputy guarding Franklin Davis removed the suspect’s leg and arm restraints so as he could take a shower before his return to jail. The…
When a special documentary series on some of America’s most blatant wrongful convictions and their subsequent exonerations opens next week on BET’s Centric Channel, Texas will be highlighted as having the third highest number of exonerations in the country. As Dallas criminal attorneys, we are saddened at Broden & Mickelsen, LLP, but not surprised by…
The recent arrest of a former coach at a prestigious Texas high school on child pornography charges, highlights the complex nature of these kinds of investigations. Gordon Oehmig, a former wrestling “Coach of the year” at St. Thomas, an all-boys Catholic school in Houston, was accused of having more than 1,500 images and 900 videos,…
Texas inmate Michael Blair ended up on death row for the gruesome murder of a 7-year-old Texas girl. His protestations that he was innocent fell on deaf ears until more than 10 years later genetic tests proved he did not kill the girl. Now he is asking the state of Texas for nearly $1 million…
A high profile case in Texas explores the circumstances under which negligence can become murder. Jessica Tata is accused of being responsible for a fire at a home day care in Houston that killed four children and injured three others. Prosecutors allege that Tata left hot oil cooking on a stove at her home day…
Under the Texas Penal Code a charge of intoxication manslaughter can be brought if a person: operates a motor vehicle in a public place, operates an aircraft, a watercraft, or an amusement ride, or assembles a mobile amusement ride; and is intoxicated and by reason of that intoxication causes the death of another by accident…
When you are wrongly convicted of a crime you can waste much of your life in jail. Even when you are finally released your quality of life may not be the way it would have been before the miscarriage of justice occurred. The sad case of James Lee Woodard is a pertinent example. Just before…
In the latest big health care fraud case to hit Texas, 12 defendants have been arrested on a variety of charges outlined in five federal indictments. Federal authorities are alleging the defendants made $100 million in fraudulent billings to Medicare, according to U.S. Attorney Sarah Saldaña of the Northern District of Texas. “Over the last…
Every year more than 200,000 people report a rape to police in the United States. They are submitted to a lengthy, invasive and uncomfortable process as a rape kit is collected. What police do not inform victims is that it may take years for their evidence to be submitted to national databases, if at all….
Convictions based on the evidence of young witnesses or victims in sexual assault cases, can be unreliable in the absence of solid forensic evidence. This proved to be the case in the conviction of David Lee Wiggins, a man from Fort Worth, Texas, who spent more than two decades behind bars before he was released…