Tag: Texas criminal defense attorney
Medical professionals are charged with saving lives. However, on occasions, hospitals provide the cover for killings. Earlier this month, a Texas nurse was convicted of capital murder over the deaths of four patients. Prosecutors said he deliberately injected the patients with air after heart surgeries. A report on NBC News stated the jury in Smith…
When you hear the terms manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide, it may be hard to distinguish between them. We Asked a Dallas homicide defense lawyer Mick Mickelsen to help us understand. Under Texas law, there are four types of criminal homicide: capital murder, murder, manslaughter, and criminally negligent homicide. Both manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide involve the…
Defendants who are charged with violent or sexual crimes may find it more difficult to bond out of jail pretrial following legislation passed in the Texas legislature earlier this month. A report on Houston Public Media noted House Bill 2 and Senate Bill 6 would prevent a defendant from being released on a personal recognizance…
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has vetoed some high-profile criminal justice bills presented to him at the end of this year’s legislative session including a move to allow earlier parole and legislation intended to restrict the use of hypnosis in the criminal justice system. Bills vetoed by Abbott over the weekend included House Bill 686, which…
A federal case in Texas illustrates how the internet has widened the scope of hate crime laws in the United States. A man from Dallas pleaded guilty this month to one hate crime stemming from a scheme that targeted gay men on the dating app Grindr. Daniel Jenkins, 22, pleaded guilty to one hate crime…
A court has upheld Texas’ recently enacted “revenge porn” law that can land offenders in jail for up to a year. The state’s so-called “revenge porn” law makes it a misdemeanor to post somebody’s intimate photographs online without their consent. This month, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that the law does not violate…
A defendant’s mental illness makes him or her less morally culpable of a crime and should be taken into consideration as a reason to avoid the death penalty, according to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. However, states can and do execute defendants who suffer from mental illnesses. Texas is no exception. The Death Penalty Information Center lists…
As criminal defense lawyers, we do everything in our power to keep defendants out of jail. We realize that Texas’s jails and prisons are hazardous places that can harm inmates. This was again illustrated by the tragic death of Marvin Scott III in Collin County. Police arrested Scott, a Black man, in Allen for allegedly…
Hate crimes again made headlines in recent weeks when a gunman killed eight people, including six Asian women, in Atlanta. The Biden administration faces pressure to bring hate crime charges against shooter Robert Aaron Long, 21, over the killings. However, the incident demonstrated flaws in the federal legislation, according to the Washington Post. The hate…
Thousands of prisoners have been exonerated in recent years for wrongful convictions, amounting to almost 25,000 lost years behind bars. Texas leads the nation on exonerations. In 2019, the most recent year figures are available for, Texas had the joint second highest number of exonerations in the country. However, the state leads the table of…