Travis County has dismissed a higher percentage of drunken driving cases than other major Texas counties in part because prosecutors said police filed weak charges or prosecutors let suspects plead to other crimes.
May 18, 2011
April 6, 2011
Austin Police to Test out Body Cameras
In an effort to help capture video and audio during police interactions, Austin Police Department is considering 4 different brands of these body cameras. These body cameras would not replace the dashboard cameras already in place in most APD vehicles. Instead, they would be additional cameras worn by the police officer to allow them to quickly record audio and video when an officer is responding to an incident.
Something I always tell my clients is to assume that everything you say or do in front of a police officer is recorded, so behave accordingly, and remain silent.
ACLU: Texas Law Protects Lizards More Than Humans
Check out the TEXAS TRIBUNE ARTICLE for an interesting read on what a report released by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University Law School says is a prime example of how “Texas laws more strictly regulate euthanasia of animals than the lethal injection of death row inmates.”
February 8, 2011
Texas DPS Driver Responsibility Amnesty Program
Texas DPS Driver Responsibility Amnesty Program
Start the New Year off Right! Is your driver license currently suspended because you still owe surcharges and haven’t been able to make payments? Make your New Year’s resolution to pay them off!
The Texas Department of Public Safety will provide an Amnesty period to offer lower payments for individuals whose driving privileges have been suspended and are in default on their surcharges. The goal of the Amnesty period is to bring drivers into compliance with the surcharge law, and allow them to become licensed and insured drivers.
Surcharges are in addition to all other reinstatement fees required for other administrative actions and do not replace any administrative suspension, revocation, disqualification or cancellation action that results from these same convictions. The amnesty reduction does not apply to any other fees that you may owe the Department of Public Safety.
When will Amnesty begin?
It will be offered from January 17 to April 17, 2011.
Applications will only be accepted through April 7, 2011.
Amnesty will not apply to any surcharges assessed after January 15, 2011.
Who will be eligible for Amnesty?
Anyone who has an unpaid surcharge that was assessed between September 30, 2004 and December 31, 2008.
At least one of the surcharge(s) meeting the above criteria must be in default prior to the Amnesty period.
How will I be able to apply?
A simple application will be available online at HERE or by telephone at 1 (877) 207-3170
No applications will be accepted by mail, email or fax; this includes contacts made to Municipal Services Bureau or the Department of Public Safety
No applications will be accepted by DPS
How much will I have to pay under Amnesty?
Your surcharge amounts will be reduced to 10% of the original amount owed for all of your surcharges combined
The maximum amount to pay will be $250
Service fees will still apply to the reduced amount
Any payments made prior to the Amnesty Program will be applied to the reduced amount
If prior payments are more than the reduced amount owed, no payment will be required
Prior payments that are more than the reduced amount owed will not be refunded
What else do I need to do?
Once your online or telephone application is approved, the surcharge suspensions will be cleared on your driving record within 3 business days.
During the application process, you will be provided the reduced amount to pay and can begin making payments after 3 business days.
A letter will also be mailed to you confirming your approval and providing the reduced amount to pay and the final date that the payment must be received
If you make partial payments, reminder notices will not be sent, but you can check your remaining Amnesty balance 24/7 online at www.txsurchargeonline.com or by telephone at 1 (877) 207-3170
If payment in full is not received by April 17, 2011, the Amnesty reduction is voided, all surcharge balances revert to the amounts owed prior to Amnesty, and the suspensions are put back on the driving record.
https://www.txsurchargeonline.com/AmnestyMain.aspx
- Law Office of Florencia Rueda, PLLC
512-415-7648
August 31, 2009
A few new Texas laws…
Starting tomorrow we will have a batch of new laws. I will do my best to to add as many of the relevant new laws as I can in the next few posts.
Here’s some of the ones that will impact everyone:
All passengers in every vehicle will have to wear a seat belt, no matter how old they are or where they are in that vehicle.
There is a new booster seat requirement for kids in vehicles, it’s no longer kids under five but it’s kids under eight, or shorter than 4’9″.
Teenagers trying to get their first driver’s license will have to get 34 hours of behind-the-wheel driving instruction, and they will have to take a driving skills test in addition to the written test.
Using a hand held phone while driving through an active school zone becomes illegal, however, local authorities can only enforce the new restriction if signs announcing the ban are posted at the beginning of each school zone.
July 28, 2009
What is a Walk Through?
Sometimes we throw around words or terms that we are accustomed to in our legal field, but that mean nothing to our client. One of those phrases is a “Walk-Through.”
At it’s most basic definition, a walk through is a process of self-surrendering with a get out of jail card in hand. For example, if you have a warrant for your arrest in Travis County for let’s say Assault Bodily Injury. You can either 1) wait to get arrested, and then hire an attorney or pay a bail bonds company to get you out of jail or 2) be proactive and hire an attorney to get your bond signed as soon as you know there is a warrant.
If you go with option number 2, the process is as follows:
1. You hire an attorney to do a walk through.
2. The attorney gets a bond signed for your warrant.
3. You and your attorney then schedule a time for you to turn yourself in, along with your bond/get out of jail card.
4. The jail then books you so that they can get your information, such as picture, thumbprint and so on.
5. After the process is complete, you go home, and your warrant is no longer active and you did not spend a night in jail, get put in jail clothes, or go to actual jail. The process can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours depending on the number of self surrenders on that particular night.
6. Once the warrant has been taken care of with a walk through, you are not at risk for being arrested for that particular warrant and you and your attorney can begin the defense of your criminal charge without a night in jail.
July 16, 2009
The Iphone to calculate your BAC?
What can’t this Iphone do? (Well until yesterday mine couldn’t get reception, but that’s a different story).
The clever named Application and Website is called “RUPISSED?” The website and application for your iphone features a blood alcohol calculator that guesstimates your BAC level depending on your honest answers to the variables. The website also features other valuable information about Alcohol, Hangover cures, and some other somewhat useful and entertaining information on topic.
And to make sure my post is also somewhat education, below is a brief overview of how a breathalyzer works.
How can a person’s breath show how much that person has had to drink?
Alcohol that a person drinks shows up in the breath because it gets absorbed from the mouth, throat, stomach and intestines into the bloodstream. Alcohol is not digested upon absorption or chemically changed in the bloodstream. As the blood goes through the lungs, a physiologically predictable amount of the alcohol will moves across the lung membranes and into the lungs themselves.
Once in contact with the air in the lungs, it evaporates and is exhaled. The concentration of the alcohol in the air in the lungs is directly related to the concentration of the alcohol in the blood.
The ratio of breath alcohol to blood alcohol is 2100 to 1 (and called the partition ratio), so the alcohol content of 2100 milliliters of exhaled air will be the same as for 1 milliliter of blood. The maths are simple from there and leads to blood alcohol readings expressed as a percentage of alcohol in the blood.
The partition ratio can vary between 1700 and 2400 depending upon the individual and local environmental conditions, leading to a breath analysis reporting either a higher or lower calculated blood alcohol reading.
Since it is a physiological response, the partition ratio can be raised or lowered by:
Body Temperature: The widely used blood-to-air partition ratio of 2100 is based on a normal body temperature of 98.6°F. A higher body temperature of the individual will overestimate the actual BAC because of the higher volatility (or vapor pressure) of liquids like alcohol at a higher temperature. An elevation in body temperature of 1°C (1.8°F) results in a 7% higher value in the result since the air in the lungs will contain an artificially higher amount of evaporated alcohol. Therefore, a person with a body temperature of 100.4°F, and with an actual blood alcohol of 0.0935%, will register a value of 0.10% by the breath test. Be careful if you have a cold or the flu.
Cellular Composition Of Blood: Blood contains suspended cells (e.g. red and white cells) and proteins, and is therefore only a partial liquid. The partition ratio of 2100 is based on an average cell volume 47%. Some of this cell volume is tissue, and at 47% cell volume, 81.5% of the blood volume is liquid in which the alcohol is actually dissolved. A person with a lower cell volume will have a falsely elevated blood alcohol level based on a breath test since the amount of alcohol in 2100ml of lung breath will be dissolved in a slightly higher amount of liquid, and hence have a lower concentration. Cell volume values range from 42% to 52% in males, and 37% to 47% in females. This variability will only have a small impact on BAC (ranging from -2% to +5%) so don’t rely on it in court.
Factors Affecting Breathalyser Accuracy- Breathalysers only estimate the BAC, not physically measure it, so several factors can cause the breathalyser to give either an artificially higher or lower reading. The most common are:
- Body temperature and blood composition as outlined above.
- Some breathalysers can’t differentiate between ethyl alcohol and other compounds of a simple chemical nature. Methyl compounds such as acetone and ketones can be present in the breath of diabetics and those taking dietary supplements, causing the breathalyser to over-estimate the BAC. Similarly vinegar can cause confusion with some of the older or dumber breathalysers. Envronmental substances in the vicinity of the breathalyser including compounds found in lacquer, paint remover, celluloid, gasoline, and cleaning fluids can also effect the reading in older breathalysers.
- Breathalysers assume that the alcohol concentration in the breath will be the same as in the blood, and that the breath is sourced from deep in the lungs, but the breath alcohol concentration can be increased by vomit or blood in the mouth, acid reflux, or simply having had a drink recently with alcohol residue from that drink still being in the mouth at the time of testing. Mouthwash or breath freshener often contain alcohol, so don’t use these in an attempt to disguise the smell of alcohol when being pulled over.
- Electrical interference from cell phones and police radios.
- By law, police breathalysers are required to be calibrated for a particular ambient operating temperature, and nearly all are. The problem comes in areas that experience cold winters – while the breathalyser may be calibrated for the correct outside temperature, if its taken out of the nice warm patrol car and used immediately it will not have had enough time to cool down to its calibrated operating temperature and will give an artificially high reading.
- Absorption of alcohol into the blood may lag actually drinking it by as much as 1-2 hours so even though you may have alcohol in your breath, if you’ve only consumed it recently it may not be in your bloodstream in the concentration that testing your breath indicates.
June 25, 2009
Question & Answer
Question: “I’m on probation and I got arrested last night for a public intoxication. I’m really scared. What is going to happen?I would be off probation actually this month….will this effect it?”
Any new arrest can affect your probation as it is considered a violation of probation. A probation officer has the discretion to give a probationer a warning, or to make him appear before a court for a “probation violation” hearing. If the latter is done, the probation officer can ask the Judge to extend your probation for more time, or add extra conditions such as more community sesrvice or classes, or ask that your probation be revoked and ask for your placement in jail. If the violation is serious (the same level or higher than your original offense), your probation may be revoked completely and confinement in jail imposed, usually that requires a bigger violation than a public intoxication.
by: Law Office of Florencia Rueda, PLLC
905 West Oltorf, Suite D
Austin, Texas, 78704
June 23, 2009
How to Avoid a Bond Forfeiture
If you have bonded out of jail, either through a personal bond or a surety bond, that bond can be revoked and an order for your arrest can be mandated if you have forfeited your bond. I often get hired to help a client after they have already acquired a bond forfeiture. They tell me about their case, and more times then not the initial charge is a minor infraction that could have been handled easily in court, if only they would have gone to court. After I explain to my clients the process of bond forfeitures and how to go about setting them aside, and all the fees associated with it, my clients then realize that what was once an easy case is now a bit more complex. So before it gets to that point, I will do my best to explain 1) How to avoid a bond forfeiture and 2) the consequences of having a forfeiture.
Show up to all court dates
A condition of your bond is that you be present to each one of your court dates. It is your responsibility to attend court and not be late, even if your attorney is going to court for you as well. That is why it is very important that you be aware of all of your pending court dates and times. If you fail to show up for your court date in a misdemeanor case the judge can forfeit your bond, increases the amount of the bond and issues a warrant for the your arrest.
However, if you fail to show up for your Felony case the consequences are more severe. The District Attorney could file a felony Bail Jumping charge. This is unlikely where only one court date is missed and through counsel you quickly gets your case back on the docket in good standing. Under Texas Penal Code, Section 38.10, Bail jumping is a third-degree felony punishable by two to ten years in prison, and/or a $10,000 fine.
Complete all conditions
Sometimes a condition of a personal bond will be to do counseling classes, or to have ignition interlock installed in your vehicle. Of course, a given condition is to not commit any new offenses while out on bond, so a new offenses can also result in your bond being forfeited. If there is a condition of your bond, and you do not complete that condition in the time allowed, a judge may revoke your bond, issue a forfeiture, and order a warrant for your arrest.
Bond Forfeiture Civil Suits
Once your bond is forfeited you not only face a warrant and (usually) at least some time in jail, you also face a civil suit to recover the amount of the bond forfeited. As a general rule, the Travis County Attorney’s Office will file a civil suit against 45 days after the bond forfeiture is entered.A civil suit can be avoided if the bond forfeiture is set aside within 30 days of its issuance. However, if the forfeiture is not set aside, the County Attorney’s Office will file the civil suit and start the clock ticking for settlement of the suit. Typically, the fees for settling a civil bond forfeiture lawsuit are the costs of filing the suit, the State’s attorney fees, and, in most cases, 5 percent per month of the amount of the bond. These fees are in addition to the cost of hiring your own attorney to handle the settlement.
If you already know that your bond has been forfeited, you should hire an attorney as soon as possible to set the forfeiture aside, stop or settle the civil suit, and get your case back on the docket.
By: Law Office of Florencia Rueda, PLLC
905 West Oltorf, Suite D,
Austin, Texas, 78704
(512) 415-7648
