Texas Criminal Defense Blog

The first-ever Miss Corpus Christina Latina, Caitlin Cifuentes, lost her title this second week of July after pageant participants she was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and driving while intoxicated. Six contestants sued Kayla Alvarez, the pageant’s local director, claiming Alvarez knew of Cifuentes’ record but still allowed her to participate in […]

Thirty-year-old former Dallas Cowboys football special teams player Claude Norman “C. J.” Spillman, Jr. was found guilty of sexual assault by a jury in Tarrant County, Texas in less than two hours on Thursday, June 30. He was sentenced to five years in prison the Friday after the trial. According to Jordan, Spillman invited a woman he […]

The state of Texas has given restitution to 101 men and women who were wrongfully convicted of and wrongfully incarcerated for committing crimes. The total compensation has amounted to $93.6 million over the last 25 years, data from the state comptroller’s office showed. This amount is bound to rise as the wrongfully imprisoned individuals get older and more […]

Dallas gun crime attorney Mark T. Lassiter was tapped by Colorado sports website bsndenver.com about possible charges faced by Aqib Talib of the Denver Broncos. Talib was shot in the right leg on June 5th. The location of the shooting is disputed. The official police report indicates that Talib and two other individuals were assaulted […]

The Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas reversed Dallas County Judge Nancy Mulder’s decision that allows the examination of a chair and room for diseases at the Dallas County jail. The chair in question is where blood is drawn from people who have been arrested for DWI charges. The ruling argued that the tests were not […]

Mark Lassiter recently spoke to Jennifer Emily of The Dallas Morning News’s Crime Blog about appealing to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals over a ruling made by the 5th Court of Appeals in Dallas. The 5th Court of Appeals overturned a decision previously made by criminal court Judge Nancy Mulder, who granted an order […]

The assault charges filed against 49-year-old Dr. Rafael Lugo have been dropped.  Lugo was serving at Houston Methodist Hospital and Houston Methodist Willowbrook Hospital, both in the Texas Medical Center in Houston, when a Montgomery County grand jury refused to indict him last Tuesday, May 31. Lugo was charged in December 2015 with assault of a family member – […]

Police Lieutenant Christopher Cook of the Arlington Police Department said that police officers in his precinct have witnessed the trend of suspects in crimes intentionally carrying imitation weapons, such as BB guns, rather than the authentic machinery. Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association member Jon Convery said that there have not been many court cases involving criminal behavior using a fake gun, […]

Fifty-six-year-old former Fort Worth, Texas police officer Brian Franklin, who was found guilty of raping a 13-year-old girl in March 1994, has been freed after serving 21 years of a life sentence.  The development comes after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in April that his conviction should be thrown out because Franklin’s accuser admitted in 2014 […]

A recent United States Supreme Court ruling which hinders police officials from drawing blood from drivers suspected of DWI without a warrant may lead to protocol changes for this procedure in Longview and Gregg County, Texas. The court chose to disregard the opposition’s argument that the rate at which alcohol metabolizes by the body justifies drawing […]