Dallas Criminal Law Blog

Tyrone Weatherall lived lavishly, being the owner of several houses and land lots in different Texas locales, as well as a BMW, exotic animals and horses.

That is all being forfeited now as Weatherall and other members of the West Side Gator Boys street gang that he led until recently in Dallas pled guilty in U.S. District Court on August 20 in a drug possession conspiracy to distribute cocaine base. Weatherall faces a potential life sentence in prison and a $4 million fine.

Weatherall and his gang members were under an intensive and long-term investigation coordinated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ("ATF") and the Dallas Police Department's Gang Unit. Agents in that investigation state that gang members possessed large amounts of weapons, crack cocaine and marijuana and operated out of as many as 20 drug houses in one neighborhood alone.

Col. Steve McCraw, Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, says that, "Texans have many choices for how to get home after a few drinks." He urges them to exercise one of those choices and not risk paying a heavy price for failure to do so.

DWI patrols are out in force throughout Texas, especially during the summer months. The Texas Department of Transportation has just commenced its annual "Drink. Drive. Go to Jail" campaign, and police officers throughout the state are working - many of them overtime hours - through Labor Day in the program and on a tandem initiative targeting drunk drivers.

Some numbers are easy to absorb and understand. Others, like the following, take just a second to comprehend: In 2009, Medicare fraud and billing errors cost the government more than $36 billion.

That astronomical figure comes courtesy of the Economist magazine, which states that, when health care fraud and not mere sloppiness accounts for the lost money, the scam typically involves a health-care provider - which might even be bogus - billing the government for services that are either not needed or even non-existent.

Not all Texas prison inmates - even those convicted of murder, sexual assault, drug crimes and other serious charges - are dangerous. Some are just old and sick.

The aging prison population across the United States, while suddenly drawing headlines from across the country, has been on the radar screens of prison officials and lawmakers for several years, as state and federal institutions are filling rapidly with more and more prisoners, many of them having significant and costly medical problems.

When it comes to domestic violence, says Stephanie Nick, coordinator for the family violence program at Resource Center Dallas, it's all about the "power and control" exercised by one person over another.

That is true in virtually all relationships, including LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) partnerships. Nick says that domestic violence is an issue in about one in four opposite-gender couples. The same holds true in LGBT relationships.

A 2003 state law established the Texas Driver Responsibility Program, an initiative that started in late 2004 with the premise that levying large surcharges on drivers - on top of regularly assessed costs - would discourage certain driving behaviors. Texas lawmakers noted explicitly that DWI offenses were centrally in mind when the law was drafted, with drunk drivers being fined the largest amounts. A tandem objective of the program has been to raise money for state highway projects and trauma care; fully half of all amounts collected from drivers go to trauma centers throughout the state.

The program is under fire, and has long been targeted, by various individuals and groups, and critics are now calling upon a House committee to scrap it.

The Dallas Police Department has noticed a discernible upward tick in the number of sexual assaults that have been committed in the city through July 2010 when compared to results through the same time period last year. There were 330 sexual assault incidents reported through the end of last month, and Chief David Brown has asked investigators to closely examine the increase and where, specifically, it has occurred.

The response has been quick release to the public of a police report August 4 that shows a clear upward trend - and sharp - in all areas of assault cases. The police department divides its sexual assault investigations into various categories, namely, crimes against juveniles (including child abuse and exploitation), adult domestic violence, and crimes against persons (such as murder, rape and robbery). The department sometimes refers to the latter type of assaults as CAPERS cases, and the investigators that track those crimes as CAPERS detectives.

Television is not Jeffrey Damon Thorn's best friend.

Thorn, 26, was fired from the Dallas police department in June following his arrest on a sexual assault charge. Now he has been identified by a second woman as having been the perpetrator of an assault on her. That woman states that she recognized Thorn while watching TV news coverage discussing Thorn's termination relating to the first assault.