The Snapshot
Our client was arrested by the Frisco Police Department and charged with two Class A misdemeanors: assault family violence under Texas Penal Code Section 22.01(a)(1) and interference with an emergency request for assistance, commonly called interference with a 911 call, under Section 42.062. The Collin County District Attorney’s Domestic Violence Unit prosecuted both cases in a Collin County Court at Law. The complainant favored prosecution from beginning to end and never signed an affidavit of non-prosecution. We got both cases dismissed.
What Our Client Was Facing
Our client and his wife got into a verbal argument at home. Both are naturalized United States citizens who immigrated from India, and the argument happened mostly in Hindi. At different points, each of them was recording the other on a phone.
We see a remarkable number of Class A assault family violence cases in Collin County begin exactly this way. One person records an argument. The other person gets angry about being recorded and reaches for the phone. While hands reach for a phone, wrists get grabbed, hands get scratched, and sometimes there is pushing. Then someone calls 911, often as much out of anger as fear, and the night ends with an arrest, no-contact bond conditions, and an emergency protective order.
In this case, when our client’s wife called 911, our client reached for the phone and interfered with her ability to complete the call. Whether any physical confrontation happened at all was disputed. When Frisco officers arrived, she told them our client had threatened her during the argument and that she felt pain in her chest where she said he had struck her, slightly below the collarbone. The officers understood her to mean he had threatened her with harm, and they arrested our client.
At the scene, officers asked whether she wanted an emergency protective order. She said no. About thirty minutes later, while our client was being booked, she called Frisco PD back and said she had changed her mind. Our client was magistrated at the Frisco jail, and the judge issued an emergency protective order that removed him from his own home and prohibited all contact with his wife and their young child except through his attorney.
Days after his release, she filed for divorce. Our client then learned that the money in their shared bank accounts had been moved out while he was still in the jail waiting to be released on bond. The day before the protective order was set to expire, her divorce attorney contacted the Frisco Municipal Court and got it extended another thirty days.
The stakes could not have been much higher for a misdemeanor case. Our client is an IT consultant who would be interviewing for new positions, and passing background checks, while the case was pending. Under Texas law, no offense arising from an allegation of family violence is ever eligible for an order of nondisclosure, and that included his interference charge, so even a deferred adjudication on either count meant a permanent, visible criminal record. Worse, a guilty plea to assault family violence carries an affirmative finding of family violence, and with that finding a family court cannot appoint both parents as joint managing conservators. One parent becomes sole managing conservator, with the right to decide where the child lives, where the child goes to school, and every other major decision, and the other parent is left as a possessory conservator whose time with the child may even be supervised. A finding of cruelty, which can include domestic violence, can also support a disproportionate division of the marital estate. His record, his career, his parental rights, and his share of everything he had built were all on the table.
The Strategy We Chose and Why
The lever in this case was proof. Our client told us the allegation was a tool to gain an advantage in the divorce. I spent years as a Collin County prosecutor, and I can tell you that prosecutors hear that explanation constantly, and they take their complainants seriously. The Domestic Violence Unit does not dismiss cases because a defendant says the allegation is really about a divorce. When I was in that office, we suspected it in plenty of cases, but suspicion is not proof, and without proof those cases get prosecuted all the way.
There is a second tendency that shaped our approach. When a couple’s case involves both an assault charge and an interference with 911 charge, prosecutors usually believe the interference case is their strongest count, even when the assault has weaknesses. The standard offer is to dismiss the assault family violence charge in exchange for a guilty plea to interference with the 911 call. For our client, that deal was almost as bad as a conviction on the assault, because the interference charge still arose from a family violence allegation and would still sit permanently on his record. So our goal was never a favorable plea. It was to build documentary proof that the allegations were serving the divorce, and to present it so convincingly that the State would dismiss both cases, which is not how these cases usually resolve in Collin County.
How the Strategy Met the Facts
The first win came fast. Article 17.292(j) of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure does not allow an emergency protective order to be modified without notice to each affected party and a hearing. The thirty-day extension had been granted with neither. We raised it immediately, and the extension was rescinded.
Then we went to work on the evidence. We obtained a certified English translation of the recorded argument in Hindi. In English, the only threat anywhere in that argument was a threat to file a lawsuit. A threat to sue someone is not a threat under the Texas Penal Code, which is concerned with threats of imminent bodily injury. That mattered enormously, because Section 42.062(d) defines an emergency as a circumstance in which the caller reasonably believes someone is in fear of imminent assault. If the only threat was litigation, there was no reasonable fear of imminent assault, and with no emergency there is no interference with an emergency request for assistance. Her own account made this worse for the State: she placed the alleged chest contact after the phone incident, meaning that at the moment our client reached for the phone, even she was not describing any assault that had occurred yet.
On the assault charge, one sentence in the officer’s report became critical. The officer wrote that the complainant rubbed her chest the entire time she was with the officers, and that whenever she stopped rubbing, the redness faded away. In our experience, redness from an actual blow does not behave that way. Redness that precedes a bruise persists and darkens. Redness that disappears the moment the rubbing stops is redness caused by the rubbing.
Finally, we coordinated with our client’s divorce attorney to obtain records that would never surface in a routine criminal case. The electronic signature metadata on the complainant’s retainer agreement showed she had hired her divorce lawyer the day before the 911 call. Phone records showed she called her divorce lawyer’s office in the window between our client’s arrest and her call to Frisco PD reversing herself on the protective order. Bank records showed the shared accounts were emptied just before the divorce filing, which is exactly what someone does after learning that Collin County’s standing orders prohibit moving money once a divorce is filed.
We put the translation, the metadata, the phone records, the bank records, and the officer’s own observation in front of the prosecutor and told a single, consistent story: these criminal allegations were built to serve a divorce strategy. The complainant objected when the prosecutors told her the cases would be dismissed. They dismissed both anyway.
The Outcome and What It Meant
Both cases were dismissed outright. No plea, no probation, no affirmative finding of family violence. Once the statute of limitations runs, our client is eligible for a complete expunction, which means the arrest itself can be erased. He interviews for jobs without a pending case or conviction on his record, and he walked into his divorce and custody case as a fit parent with no family violence finding, no cruelty evidence, and no criminal leverage hanging over the property division.
If You Are Facing a Similar Charge
Phones come out during arguments in almost every domestic case we see now, and reaching for one is how many of these arrests start. If you were arrested by Frisco PD or any other Collin County agency on an assault family violence or 911 interference charge, do not assume a hostile complainant or a missing affidavit of non-prosecution means your case cannot be won. Our Frisco domestic violence defense team and our Collin County criminal defense lawyers build these cases on proof. Call 214-764-5535 for a free consultation.
My Dallas Criminal Lawyer, 5 Cowboys Way, Suite 300, Frisco, TX 75034
If you or someone you love is facing an assault family violence charge in this county, our Collin County assault family violence lawyer page explains how we defend these cases, including the grand jury strategy that can end a felony case before it begins.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can an assault family violence charge be dismissed in Collin County if the complainant wants to prosecute?
Yes, it happened in this case. The complainant never signed an affidavit of non-prosecution and actively pushed for a conviction. Dismissals in that posture require proof the prosecutor cannot ignore, not just a defendant’s explanation, and every case depends on its own facts.
Is interference with a 911 call a serious charge in Texas?
Yes. It is a Class A misdemeanor under Penal Code Section 42.062, punishable by up to a year in jail, and when it arises from a family violence allegation a conviction is never eligible for nondisclosure. The State must prove there was an actual emergency, which the statute defines as a reasonable fear of imminent assault.
Can I get an expunction after an assault family violence dismissal?
In most cases, yes. When charges are dismissed and the statute of limitations has expired, you can generally petition to have the arrest and the charges expunged, meaning the records are destroyed. An attorney should review your specific case, because eligibility depends on how the case was resolved.
Every case is different. Past results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future case. The result described here depended on the specific facts, evidence, and circumstances of that case, and details have been generalized to protect client confidentiality.
