The Snapshot
Our client was arrested by the Plano Police Department and charged with Driving While Intoxicated, a Class B misdemeanor. The case was filed in one of the Collin County Courts at Law, the county’s misdemeanor courts. The State’s lab report showed a blood alcohol concentration just over the legal limit. We tried the case to a jury, and the jury found our client Not Guilty.
What Our Client Was Facing
On paper, a Class B DWI carries up to 180 days in the county jail, a fine of up to $2,000, an additional statutory fine of up to $3,000, up to two years of probation, and a 90-day driver’s license suspension. For this client, the real stakes were bigger than the statute.
Our client is a lawful permanent resident, a green card holder. Under current federal immigration policy, any criminal record creates serious risk for permanent residents, and DWI draws particularly harsh treatment. For immigration purposes, the federal government makes no meaningful distinction between a DWI conviction and a DWI resolved through deferred adjudication. Either result can also complicate international travel, and like many permanent residents, our client worried about whether he could visit family in his home country and make it back through customs to the life he built in Collin County. He also works in technology consulting, where each new engagement means a new background check. A DWI on his record would not show up once. It would show up over and over, every time one contract ended and the next one began.
The arrest itself was a classic example of a police report reading worse than what actually happened. The stop took place near the apartment complexes around Shops at Legacy and the Dallas North Tollway, an area Plano PD covers closely for DWI enforcement. Our client slowed to a near stop at a red light and made a right turn without using a turn signal, with no other vehicles around. That gave the officer a lawful basis for a traffic stop, but the driving itself was controlled and safe.
From there, the report and the video told two different stories. The report described slurred speech. Our client speaks with an accent the officer was not familiar with, and the video showed him answering questions directly and in a normal amount of time. The report described difficulty producing a driver’s license as a sign of impaired faculties. In reality, the license was stuck in a plastic wallet sleeve on a hot, humid night, and our client freed it quickly, a task that takes fine motor control, not the absence of it. The report noted what appeared to be vomit along the side of the vehicle, without noting which side. It was on the passenger side, left there by a passenger our client had dropped off earlier in the evening.
And when the officer asked our client to rate his own intoxication on a scale of zero to ten, he answered five, an answer the State leaned on hard at trial. His blood came back just under 0.09. He had told the officer he drank two beers, and unlike in most DWI cases, the evidence showed that was the truth. For someone who rarely drinks, feeling halfway to the most intoxicated he had ever been at a BAC near the legal limit was honesty, not a confession. His field sobriety tests were imperfect, performed in shoes with a raised heel.
The Strategy We Chose and Why
Texas law gives a DWI jury two independent paths to a guilty verdict: proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the driver lost the normal use of mental or physical faculties, or proof that the driver’s blood alcohol concentration was 0.08 or higher at the time of driving. A defense that answers only one of those paths loses. So we built this case on two fronts: the roadside investigation, and the blood.
We try DWI cases out of the Legacy corridor regularly, and we have written about how DWI cases are actually investigated and prosecuted in Collin County. That experience told us this was a case to try rather than plea. The driving was controlled, the video contradicted the report in specific, provable ways, and the blood number sat close enough to the line to attack with science.
How the Strategy Met the Facts
The first front was cross examination. Piece by piece, we walked the officer through the video. He acknowledged on the stand that our client showed very good use of his faculties while producing his license, and that the report mischaracterized that entire stage of the investigation. He acknowledged that the vomit was on the passenger side of the vehicle, not the driver’s window, which matched our client’s account of dropping off a passenger. By the end of cross, the roadside investigation no longer supported the loss-of-faculties theory, and the jury had every reason to weigh the report’s other characterizations with caution.
That still left the lab report. Blood in almost every Collin County DWI case is tested at the Texas DPS crime laboratory in Garland, and this one showed a BAC between 0.08 and 0.09 at the time of the draw. We attacked it two ways.
First, timing. Current alcohol toxicology holds that the body takes about two hours to fully absorb alcohol, most of it through the small intestine. Alcohol still in the stomach has not yet reached the blood. Our client told the officer he stopped drinking about an hour before the stop, and his blood was drawn about an hour after the stop. On cross examination, the State’s own analyst agreed that our client most likely had not fully absorbed the alcohol at the time of driving, which meant his BAC behind the wheel was most likely lower than the number on the report, and with a draw between 0.08 and 0.09, most likely below 0.08 when Plano PD actually saw him driving.
Second, the retest. We obtained a court order to have the blood retested at the Southwest Institute of Forensic Sciences, the laboratory that performs forensic toxicology for Dallas County DWI cases. In my experience, retested blood comes back roughly 0.015 to 0.02 below the original result, because testing requires unsealing the tube, and the oxygen that enters causes alcohol to dissipate. Our retest came back between 0.06 and 0.07, exactly the range we expected, and our defense expert explained the science to the jury.
Here is the part most people miss about retests. You do not offer a retest expecting the jury to believe the second number instead of the first. You offer it because a jury that already doubts the State’s case still needs something concrete to hang reasonable doubt on when the original report says 0.08 or more. The retest, together with the absorption timeline, gave this jury exactly that.
The Outcome and What It Meant
The jury found our client Not Guilty. An acquittal means no conviction, no deferred adjudication, and no plea of any kind. For a lawful permanent resident, it meant no immigration consequences flowing from this case, no fear at the customs counter after visiting family abroad, and no arrest quietly following him from background check to background check as his consulting career moves forward. An acquittal also opens the door to expunging the arrest record entirely, so the case can be erased rather than explained.
If You Are Facing a DWI in Plano or Collin County
Police reports often read worse than the video, and a blood test at or near 0.08 is not the end of the story. Cases like this can be won, but only when someone examines every piece of the State’s evidence, from the roadside video to the science behind the lab report. If you have been arrested for DWI in Plano or anywhere in Collin County, start with our overview of defending a criminal case in Collin County, or learn more about our Plano criminal defense practice. For the full picture of how we defend these cases, from the Shops at Legacy stop patterns to the ALR hearing and the occupational license, see our Plano DWI lawyer page. Then call 214-764-5535 for a free consultation.
My Dallas Criminal Lawyer
5 Cowboys Way, Suite 300
Frisco, TX 75034
214-764-5535
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a blood test over 0.08 be challenged in a Collin County DWI?
Yes. The State must prove the driver’s BAC at the time of driving, not at the time of the blood draw. Alcohol absorption timing and a court-ordered retest of the blood sample can both create reasonable doubt about the number on the original lab report, as they did in the case described here.
Does a DWI affect a green card holder’s immigration status?
Under current federal immigration policy, a DWI creates serious risk for lawful permanent residents, and for immigration purposes the federal government makes no meaningful distinction between a conviction and deferred adjudication. An acquittal avoids those consequences entirely. Any permanent resident facing a DWI should address both the criminal case and the immigration exposure from the very beginning.
What happens after a Not Guilty verdict in a Texas DWI case?
An acquittal means no conviction, no probation, and no criminal record resulting from the charge. Texas law also allows a person acquitted at trial to pursue an expunction, which erases the records of the arrest and prosecution.
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.
