DALLAS CRIMINAL DEFENSE LAW OFFICE

I often have clients or family members tell me that the arresting police officer did not read the arrested person their rights. They want to know whether the failure to read someone their rights means that the person’s case should be dismissed. Unfortunately, the answer is, “no.” says Dallas criminal defense lawyer John Helms. The fact that the police do not inform an arrested person of the...

Almost everyone has heard the phrase “beyond a reasonable doubt.”  It is the standard that the government’s proof must meet in order for a jury to find a defendant guilty of a crime, explains John Helms, Dallas criminal lawyer.  It is also an elusive concept that is sometimes difficult for jurors to grasp. I also believe that some prosecutors try to convince jurors that it is a lower standa...

A man in Florida recently spent 90 days in jail for possession of suspected cocaine, which lab tests later confirmed was not cocaine reports Dallas drug lawyer John Helms. The man was a construction worker, and he had white powder on the seat and floorboard of his car when police stopped him. Presumably, it was drywall dust, but the police field tested it, and the test was positive for coca...

Kate's Law is a bill in Congress named after Kate Steinle, a young woman who was senselessly murdered in San Francisco by a man with a long and serious criminal history, who had been previously deported from the United States, and who had returned multiple times.  Kate's Law has passed the House of Representatives, but it must also pass the Senate and be signed by the President in order to ...

The United States Supreme Court recently held that, if you receive inside confidential information about a company from a friend or relative, and if you use that to trade on the company's stock, you can be convicted of criminal securities fraud if you knew the information came from an inside source, even if you did not give anything in return for the information. In other words, just gettin...

A Dallas County jury found a married father of three young children not guilty of indecency with a child. The defendant, represented by Dallas criminal defense lawyer John Helms, was accused of touching the genitals of an underage relative when she was 11 and 12 years old. Mr. Helms' client could have been sentenced to prison for two to twenty years if he was found guilty. The jury took les...

Tiger Woods was recently arrested in Florida for what Florida law calls Driving Under the Influence ("DUI").  In Texas, we call this driving while intoxicated ("DWI"). Texas has a crime called DUI, but it applies to people under the legal drinking age who have a "detectable amount" of alcohol in their system, even if they are not intoxicated.  Mr. Woods was found asleep in his car with th...

You can’t turn on the news these days without hearing something about President Trump and the firing of FBI Director James Comey. Whatever your political leanings, it can be unsettling to hear people talk about high-ranking officials, including the president, interfering with a criminal investigation. The media has tossed around phrases like “obstruction of justice,” but what does this ...

On May 10, 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions sent a memo to all federal prosecutors that significantly changed the landscape for federal drug cases, reports John Helms, a federal drug defense lawyer based in Dallas. The Attorney General heads the United States Department of Justice and therefore sets policies that Justice Department employees, including federal prosecutors, must follow. ...

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (which covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi), recently decided an important case about the right of citizens to sue the police for retaliating against them. The case is Alexander v. City of Round Rock, No. 16-50839 (5th Cir. April 18, 2017). In Alexander, a man refused to cooperate with an officer who attempted to question him abo...