Author: Mick Mickelsen
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…
We have written often about the importance of hiring an experienced attorney to represent you in the event you are charged with a child pornography offense in federal court. The penalties are simply much too severe to risk retaining an attorney who has not had significant experience in handling these types of cases. A recent…
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….
Robert Wayne Harris looks set to be the eighth man to be executed in Texas this year after the Court of Criminal Appeals denied the death row inmate a stay of execution. The judges decided against stopping the execution, despite some disturbing evidence about the adequacy of the original defense case more than a decade…
In a high profile case in Arlington, Texas, the owner of a strip club that ran into trouble with the city, has pleaded guilty to plotting to murder the Mayor and a lawyer working for the city. KVUE.com reported 34-year-old Ryan Walker Grant faces serving 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, after taking…
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…
More people are being booked for criminal immigration offenses in border states such as Texas, even as the number of people being apprehended as illegal immigrants falls. A report by Fox News said while the number of illegal immigrants being apprehended has reached a 40 year low, more people are being charged due to a…