Mimi Coffey | Attorney at Law

You decide you have had too much, and you feel the right thing to do is pull over and sleep it off. Is this a DWI? According to a Tarrant County judge in a bench trial in case number 1366316, decided on February 12, 2015- yes it is. Do I respectfully disagree with the decision? Yes.  Here are the facts: my guy (Mr. "H") was asleep in his legally parked car at a QuikTrip in Keller, Texas. No one saw him drive. No one called the police on him. The QuikTrip attendant had no idea as to how long he had been there, but it had been "a while." The seat was in recline with Mr. H fast asleep. After waking him up, the police interrogation went like this: Mr. H:    "I personally think I did the best thing." Cop:       "What's the best thing?" Mr. H:    "Where I'm at right now." Cop:       "Which is what?" Mr. H:    "Well, it damn sure ain't drinking, damn sure ain't pulli...

The Texas Department of Public Safety laboratory in Houston was responsible for thousands of botched results (some completely fraudulent) because of lab analyst Jonathan Salvador. This occurred from 2006-2012. The Texas Forensic Commission got wind of his questionable work and launched an investigation. One of the commissioners in the investigation, Dr. Nizam Peerwani concluded that the Texas Department of Public Safety lab's office "tolerated under-performance". So this was not just a problem from the analyst, but the whole lab shared culpability. Rather than properly address the problems after this scandal in order to improve testing, Texas DPS convinced our legislators to restricting test results in court only to them. Hence, Texas Code of Criminal Procedure 38.35 was enacted that restricts test results admitted to court to be limited to those of a lab with the Texas DPS certification. Laboratories like Max Courtney's was shut down immediately. Max Courtney...