John Helms

I read with interest a recent opinion piece in the New York Times called, “Yes, Jury Selection Is As Racist As You Think.  Now We Have Proof,” by Professor Ronald Wright of Wake Forest University Law School. The premise of the article is that African-Americans are removed from criminal jury panels at a greater rate than whites because they are more often the subject of “strikes,” also known a...

Federal Finch Smuggling Defense Lawyer in Dallas, Texas On December 12, 2018, an airline passenger was detained and arrested by US Customs and Border Protection for trying to smuggle 70 South American finches into the United States.  The birds were packed inside hair curlers and taken on a flight from Georgetown, Guyana to Kennedy Airport in New York.  The smuggler now faces substantial fine...

Voting is one of the most fundamental American rights. Normally, most people don’t really think about voting unless an election is approaching. Arguably, voting fraud wasn’t on many people’s radar until recently, when it became something of an issue in the last presidential election. In recent years, there have been news headlines about cases of voter fraud. In some instances, people have bee...

Dallas Criminal Defense Attorney and Former Federal Prosecutor John Helms has been a trial lawyer for more than 20 years and is uniquely positioned to evaluate cases from both sides– ensuring the best possible outcome for his clients. Law Enforcement Is Not “Smearing” Botham Jean. There is no doubt that the shooting of Botham Jean by an off-duty Dallas Police officer and his resulting death ...

What happens if drug traffickers threaten to harm a person’s family if the person does not transport drugs for the traffickers?  What if the trafficker threatens to kill the defendant right then and there if the defendant does not do as he is told and transport drugs?  The law that applies to federal drug trafficking and distribution cases in Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, and Sherman, Texas reco...

Botham Jean, a 26-year-old unarmed black Caribbean man, was shot to death in his Dallas apartment on September 6, 2018, by a white female off-duty Dallas Police Officer named Amber Guyger.  Mr. Jean was in his apartment doing nothing wrong. The case has gained national attention because of the unusual explanation by Ms. Guyger. She claims that she mistakenly thought Mr. Jean’s apartment was h...

Most people think of “swatting” as something you might do to shoo away a fly away. However, the term also refers to a dangerous — and increasingly popular — type of crime that has resulted in fatalities. According to FBI reports, there are about 400 swatting cases every year.   Swatting, which refers to a police SWAT team, occurs when an individual calls the police and makes a false claim tha...

Fraud means using false statements or other types of deception in order to try to get money or property from someone else.. (1) There are many cagtegories of fraud.  Some refer to the means of communications used, such as mail fraud (using the mail or an interstate carrier to commit fraud), or wire fraud (using interstate wire communications, like telephone, fax, email, texts, or computer...

It would probably surprise most people to learn that, in practice, in many federal courts, a sentence for distributing 1.7 kilos of methamphetamine will be about the same as if the defendant had distributed 450 kilos of cocaine or 90 kilos of heroin.  Why is methamphetamine treated as SO much more serious than cocaine or heroin? There are two main reasons. Both have to do with the Federal S...

Penalties for a federal crime in Dallas are significant, and anyone charged with these criminal offenses must take it seriously and secure an experienced legal team. Federal crimes involve violations of federal statutes, so the trial of anyone charged with these crimes would be in a federal court. It also means that anyone convicted of a federal crime faces often harsh federal sentencin...