DWI & Drunk Driving

Drunk Driving and DWI Manslaughter Cases

If you aren’t careful, and drive under intoxication, you can be charged with manslaughter. For instance, Samuel went to one of the parties on New Year night. He got drunk but decided to go back home by driving his own car. He didn’t take the help of his friends. Unfortunately, he killed another person while driving on the way back home.

Caught by the police, he was charged with intoxication manslaughter in Brazoria County, Texas and is right now under Jury trial. He has been fined as much as $5000 and additionally, is thought that he is going to be sentenced to as many as ten years in jail.

Avoid Intoxication Manslaughter Charges

It can not only mean a jail term a huge fine for you but employers shying away from hiring you in future too.

It is important to understand when you would be charged under a drunk driving offense. DWI refers to ‘Driving While Intoxicated.’ This refers to driving under the influence of alcohol. Thus if you are driving a motor vehicle and you have alcohol in your system you can be charged with a DWI. A DWI does not require a specific level of alcohol, just the fact that alcohol is present in the system.

Acting Responsibly

Driving While Intoxicated on alcohol is risky not only for the driver himself or herself, but also the environment – which may include co-riders, people on the road and other vehicles in the way. Therefore before hiring someone for a job that requires vigilance while driving, for example, hiring a driver for your car or hiring drivers for your warehouse trucks, it is essential to make sure that in the past they have not driven recklessly. Their past DWI records can be accessed extremely easily.

This means that employers can locate any offender easily, and most employers do find this information out when running any background checks. Most employers would then shy away from hiring someone who has been involved in a case, making life more difficult for them.

Drunk Driving and DWI Manslaughter

The Serious Nature of DWI Cases in Texas

DWI is the acronym for the serious crime of Driving While Intoxicated. Driving While Intoxicated is defined as when a person operates a motor vehicle on public roadways while intoxicated as a result of the effects of consuming alcoholic beverages.

For persons who are arrested in connection with driving while impaired or under the influence of drugs, the offense is known as DUI or driving under influence/Driving Under The Influence. Both crimes will mean that the defendant will lose their Texas Drivers License if they are convicted, and in cases where a defendant is found to be drunk driving, the Texas Drivers License of the accused is suspended long before the court date during a process referred to as Administrative License Revocation.

Understanding 1^st DWI Offenses

A person only needs to be convicted of driving while intoxicated (DWI) one time to create a situation that will have long-lasting effects that can make one’s life a living hell. For starters, if you have been arrested for DWI as a first-time offender, regardless of whether the case is being charged as a misdemeanor, you need a Texas DWI attorney on your side to hopefully beat the case, keep it off the record, and keep you one step away from being charged as a felon in a future instance of criminal charges of the same kind.

If you are convicted for a first offense DWI in Texas you will face fines that can go up to $2000, a jail sentence which could last up to six months in a County jail, and the suspension of your Texas Drivers License for a period of up to one year.

As of the year 2015, persons who are accused and convicted of DWI on first offenses will be forced by the court to have, and pay for, a breathalyzer machine/IntoxaLock to be installed on their vehicle which is intended to prevent the driver from cranking up the vehicle unless they do a below/breath tests to ensure that they are not intoxicated on alcohol, but are sober prior to the vehicle cranking up.

This is a serious and embarrassing consequence of being convicted of a misdemeanor DWI in Texas.

Understanding 2^nd DWI Offenses

According to Houston DWI Lawyer Tad A. Nelson, the founding attorney at The Law Offices of Tad Nelson & Associates, persons who are convicted of a second DWI offense may still have an opportunity to take advantage of probation in order to limit the time that they will have to spend incarcerated in County jail. Also worth noting, second DWI charges in Texas amounts a class a misdemeanor criminal offenses which carry fines of up to $4000 a potential jail sentence that can last for one month to one year, and a Texas Drivers License suspension which can go all the way up to two years.

Felony DWI in Texas

If you are arrested for your third DWI occurrence, or if someone is injured as a result of a vehicle or accident caused as a result of you being intoxicated while attempting to operate a motor vehicle on public highways, streets, and roads, felony charges will persist.

Criminal prosecutors take felony DWI cases particularly serious as the threat to public safety is high, and lives are lost on a steady basis.

If you commit intoxication manslaughter you could face life in prison, but will more than likely be sentenced to a 20 year prison term.

However, it’s important that my readers keep in mind that a serious drunk driving car accident does not have to occur, and people do not have to die, for a person to receive a life sentence for felony DWI in Texas. There are numbers of habitual DWI offenders or sitting in a Texas penitentiary because they can’t keep their mouth off the bottle in situations that will put them behind the wheel of a vehicle.

Depending on the situation surrounding the felony DWI charges, or the details of the case in other words, a felony DWI convict could, in theory, face a prison sentence based on misdemeanor second DWI charges, a state jail felony DWI consequence, 2 to 10 years in the state penitentiary on a third charge if the defendant is habitual, and a sentence that can hit 20 years, or life, if the defendant is habitual and/or the cause of DWI – homicide.

Find the Best DWI Attorney

Possibilities of 10, 20, and 25 year to life sentences represent a hell of a lot of pressure to a person who was just having a good night out and could not handle their liquor. There are some attorneys in Texas that pad their stats on a weekly basis as they crush prosecutors who are attempting to gain convictions from juries on defendant’s who were caught by police driving while intoxicated. It behooves you to locate and retain the services of one of these highly sought after DWI attorneys in Texas if you are to have a fighting chance of winning in court.

When In Doubt, Seek Legal Representation

There are a number of times in our lives when we’re facing challenges that we don’t fully understand, which are best left in the hands of professionals who stake their entire lives and careers on helping people who are in need of assistance. Attorneys that handle criminal cases and family law matters are to most often sought after.

Imaging being jammed up by police and not knowing what to do, or receiving divorce papers or having your children used against you. The legal loopholes involved with such situations are the main reasons why its sensible to retain legal counsel if you’re ever in any entanglement with the law.

Houston DWI Lawyer

Steering Clear Of Drunk Driving Arrests in Galveston

If you’re like me, then you probably drive from Houston to Galveston at least a couple of times a year if you live in the “big city”, and likely more by an increasing degree the closer to the island you live.

I, for one, normally only travel to the island when it involves business, and I don’t drink, but many of my friends and relatives do and they’ll tell you that the police blend in with their environments like ninja when it comes camping out a DWI trap.

Don’t be caught in that trap. Bad situations are prone to occur.

I-45 is laden with little hideaways the police will use in their efforts to snatch you up.

You’ve been advised.

Don’t Drive Back From Galveston “Buzzed” or “Drunk”

If you drink, and you know you’ll be intoxicated afterwards, its probably going to be a good idea to get a room and stay your night on the island rather than risking your safety and clean criminal record in an attempt to drive back to Houston.

Its quite understandable why one would want to attempt to take that drive back home. One thing we never count on when getting behind the wheel after drinking is the level of our intoxication increasing long after drinking has ended.

The catcher in the rye if you ask me.

People Do The Stup-Thinkable Often

Yes it happens. People drive drunk.

People put their lives at risk, often after enjoying it, and the lives of others when they take to the roads drunk or under the influence of drugs or medication. These same people then have the nerve to give police a hard time when they are stopped and thought, or suspected of driving drunk. In other cases, Galveston DWI sting police can get over-aggressive (if over aggressive makes any sense) resulting in the arrest and false accusal of an innocent person.

This is where having a lawyer like attorney Tad Nelson of the Law Offices of Tad Nelson and Associates,who understands blood alcohol chemistry, can come in handy if you plan to fight it out it court. Especially if you’ve fallen victim to one of those golf cart cases.