TEXAS V. S.A.

0.112 BLOOD TEST! Client was a young man on his way home, west bound, from a sports bar. Officers had another person pulled over in the east bound lanes. Magnolia PD Officer Landrum wrongfully believed that the client didn’t pull over for their stop. 1. The video showed the client clearly in his west bound lane; 2. You only have to pull over in a lane for an officer on a stop in the same direction of lanes. Officer Landrum had been written up by  plenty of the Montgomery District Attorneys for dishonesty involving their office and DAs. I know this because it was provided to me as Brady notice. Remember, this is a 24 year old man, who has never been arrested a day in his life, has a 0.112 alleged blood score, no accident, with a known lying police officer. The two DAs in the court decided to continue on and try to convict my client. My client’s mother and my intern were in the Court before I got there and heard the DAs say this would be a “good learning experience” because Thiessen was trying the case. Also, the analyst who tested the blood had since stopped testing blood and moved to Colorado. These DAs chose to spend tax payers money on buying her a last minute flight to come down and testify. The trial commenced and I crossed Officer Landrum on the standard field sobriety tests. I showed him medical records of the client’s leg and knee injuries. And we systematically broke down the video so the jury could see how these tests are actually given and their meticulous grading system. The analyst then got on and testified about how she never made mistakes and that her results were reliable and accurate. We brought our own forensic toxicologist, Amanda Culbertson, to show the State and the lab how their own machine pipette was off by more that 10%, the blood was absolutely clotted in the tubes and shouldn’t have been, and that the analyst did not let the vials come to room temperature before preparing the samples. All of these will create false high ethanol levels. The DA and the analyst refused to acknowledge any mistakes. Rather, the DAs objected over 100 times to my evidence, arguments, and even my wanting to show their evidence. The jury of 6 contained 2 federal officers, 1 ex DWI officer from the UK, a lady who was married to a trooper and two people that had no law enforcement ties. Needless to say we were sweating the verdict just based on the composite of the jury. The jury returned a swift verdict of Not Guilty in less than 30 minutes and came out and hugged my client, his mom and myself. The jury could not believe how “aggressive and annoying” (their words not mine) the DAs were in this case. Many times during this case I told the DAs they needed to cut this case or offer something besides a DWI. Around mid-trial when I found out about them saying this was a learning experience I called both of them out and told them how wrong this was to try this case. DAs take an oath to promote justice. This was not justice, this was them playing with a young man’s life and future. This was a particular set of DAs that chose this course. I have let their supervisors and the legal community know. I’m just so thankful to this jury for seeing through their tactics and trickery. They sponsored a lying police officer, they flew in an analyst who was basically a puppet for the State, and then proceeded to object to any evidence of innocence. Montgomery County has some fine DAs, but not these two. I was very worried about this jury being officers, but they showed strength and character and saved our client’s future. We are truly indebted to them and thankful they were there to analyze the evidence and balance the DAs power in this case. Thank you so much to that jury. Y’all really showed me that good police will spot bad police and abuse of power. I am indebted to y’all. Thank you for standing up to the DAs office and demanding better evidence and science.