DWI Plea Bargains

Question: Can You Plea Bargain a DWI in Texas?

Answer:

In Texas, if you’re charged with a DWI, the decision about whether to work out a plea bargain or whether to set a case for trial usually takes about three months to reach that point because there’s a discovery process that we go through. We collect video tapes, we collect DVDs, we collect breath tests, we collect blood tests, we collect the police reports, and then we usually sit down with the client and we look at it all. In a lot of cases, there are other things that we also consider.

Did the officer know what he was doing? Sometimes an officer is in training and he doesn’t do the field sobriety test correctly. Very often, in Texas for instance, a police officer stops somebody for weaving within their lane. Weaving within your lane is not an offense, but a lot of new officers stop somebody for that. The fact is, even if someone is quite intoxicated, if the stop was not a good stop, you can have the case thrown out. What we end up doing is collecting all the evidence, and then after we collect it all, we sit down with the client and we map out a game plan. Sometimes the game plan is to work out a deal because the situation is not worth spending the money and the delay to end up with the same result. Very often, that decision is made three or four months down the road, we look at the case and it’s made jointly with the client.