When many people think of appeals in criminal cases in Texas, their minds go straight to death row cases – and for good reason. Death row appeals tend to attract media attention, especially they involve the reversal of conviction based…
2020
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When many people think of appeals in criminal cases in Texas, their minds go straight to death row cases – and for good reason. Death row appeals tend to attract media attention, especially they involve the reversal of conviction based…
Category: Appeals | Death Penalty | SCOTUS
Defending a person charged in a serious criminal case, under the best of circumstances, is a difficult task and an extraordinary professional responsibility. Defending a death penalty case under any circumstance is much more arduous and requires years of commitment…
Category: Appeals
The justice system isn’t always perfect. Although endowed with numerous procedural protections and safeguards, trial of criminal cases can, and often do, result in unfair verdicts. Jury biases, police misconduct, and/or prosecutorial misconduct can skew the facts against the defendant…
Category: Appeals | Drug Crime
The Confrontation Clause prominently embedded in the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that a criminal defendant has a fundamental right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.”
Fifteen years ago the U.S. Supreme Court forcefully…
Category: Appeals | Prosecutorial Misconduct
Firing an employee in retaliation for refusing to perform an unlawful act violates both federal (Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) and Texas (Chapter 21 of the Texas Labor Code) law.
Further, the Texas Supreme Court…
Mental Health America estimates that 5 to 10 percent of the nation’s 2700 death row inmates suffer from some form mental illness.
In August 2006, the American Bar Association through Resolution 122A said that an individual on death row…
Section 1.07(a)(17)(A) of the Texas Penal Code defines a “deadly weapon” as “ … anything manifestly designed, made, or adapted for the purpose of inflicting death or serious bodily injury.” A firearm falls within this definition, regardless of whether the…
Category: Appeals | Criminal Law
Article 37.07 § 3(a) of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure has long been considered one of the guiding principles concerning the admissibility of evidence during the penalty phase in a felony case. This article allows the state to offer…
A defendant seeking to establish that he received ineffective assistance of counsel during a criminal proceeding must demonstrate (1) that his attorney’s performance was so deficient that it fell below “an objective standard of reasonableness” and (2) that “a reasonable…
Category: Appeals | Corruption | Criminal Law
Open meetings laws are often referred to as “sunshine laws.” These laws require that meetings, decisions and records, with some exceptions, of state and federal agencies and regulatory bodies be open and readily available to the public.
The public…