Your words, not mine. I’m glad to hear that they’re not. According to you.
Macgiver, we just keep going around because you seem to think you’ll break me. You won’t. I never said " Deaths per 1,000 ". I made a statement of fact that you keep refusing to admit is accurate, even though we are both citing the same internet web page. Why this is, is a mystery to me. That’s okay, we don’t have to agree. I respect your right to interpret data as you see fit. 
Your fact is not statistically relevant to the point you made which makes it a number, not a fact. You didn’t say executions per 1000 but that is the only way to compare states of different populace sizes. Comparing a range of years is only relevant if each state had a death sentence for the SAME RANGE OF YEARS. If you post a number that has no statistical relevance than the point you’re trying to make has no meaning.
Well yes, unfortunately, I have first-hand knowledge that they aren’t.
Just like anywhere else in the States, big-city judges and prosecutors are interested in getting rid of the small crap – eensy weensy misdemeanors committed by people with no former record – with at most a fine. If you do your best to piss off the judge, it might be a bigger fine.
Public intoxication is a Class C misdemeanor in Texas.
The maximum sentence for a Class C misdemeanor is a fine not to exceed $500.
IANAL. I just know how to Google. So, at the very worst, they will have to pay $500. I doubt rather seriously that anyone who was, say, getting into a taxi from the bar is going to have any trouble. I’m willing to bet, as high-profile as this case is, that some young lawyer might just defend a few folks free of charge.
Oh – and IANAL, but I had a brief chat with one just to clarify, and in Texas a Class C misdemeanor is essentially along the lines of “look, just pay a fine and get out of here, mkay?”
I thank you for doing that research, well done. I’ll be delighted to alter what I said in my earlier posts, reflecting the information you have shared with all of us. Ok?
Based on a real taste for maximum punishments, I have no doubt but that the cops will push for, and the judges will mete out, a fine of $ 500.00 for each and every single person drawn up in that sweep, regardless of who they were, how long they’d been standing in the hotel bar ( one woman had just checked in - sober- moments before entering the bar, and was arrested anyway. :rolleyes: ).
I see three problems with this response.
A judge and jury is not a “law enforcement entity.” The police enforce the law. The justice system administers it.
Even if we accept your dubious assertions about death penalty cases, you have failed to show, or even hint at, any connection between those and cases involving public intoxication. Apples and oranges. Or, more apt perhaps, apples and squash blossoms.
You are talking about severity of punishment after a conviction. My point was that if such a case came to trial, the testimony of the officer in and of itself that the accused was a danger to himself and others would be insufficient to obtain a conviction. No conviction = no sentence.
Cool beans.
Now I’ll agree with some of that – the cops will most assuredly push for the maximum fine. But being arrested and being convicted are two different things, and the city is getting a lot of political pressure to let these people go. Dallas is very big as far as business tourism: not so many people to go see Dallas because they’re really keen on the place, but if it becomes a hostile place for convention-goers then the city will lose a heck of a lot more money than it would get from these fines.
Take your example of a woman arrested for merely standing soberly in a hotel bar. Even in this benighted land of my dearly beloved Texas (I will admit we are somewhat odd here) you cannot be convicted of a crime without any evidence whatever. Any half-asleep entirely intoxicated public defender could argue that because there were no tests performed as to her intoxication – no Breathalyser, no reciting the alphabet backward while walking a tightrope, etc – that she is not guilty of the charge of public intoxication.
But that’s only speaking to actual conviction. Let’s take Joe Blow. Mr. Blow has never been arrested before. He has a few parking tickets and his credit isn’t so good, but on the whole he’s a law-abiding citizen. He’s out for a drink, gets dragged in for public intoxication when he steps out of the bar for a smoke, and gets pinged at 0.08.
It is still very likely that the case will be dismissed. Especially in Dallas.
Let me repeat: it is still very likely that the case will be dismissed, especially in Dallas.
Even assuming that Mr. Blow is a member of a minority – he’s a gay Jewish Jamaican-American – he still has a very good chance of having his case dismissed. Because you see, when Mr. Blow goes into the courtroom he’s going to be surrounded by other people who have committed misdemeanors. He will sit next to a nineteen year old boy who tried to shoplift an iPod from Wal-Mart. In front of him will be a rather stinky fellow who was caught masturbating in Old Mrs. McCreedy’s backyard. Behind him will be a seventeen year old on his fourth drunk driving arrest. There are probably a hundred people in a courtroom designed to hold fifty comfortably – people standing in the aisles, people sitting in the jury box. Perhaps three quarters of these are people here for their own hearings.
The names are called out. He’d better be there – this will of course really suck if Mr. Blow’s from out of town, but the law’s the same everywhere in the 50 states, correct me if I’m wrong. He talks to his public defender or to the lawyer he’s hired, assuming he has one (somewhat pointless considering that the fine is $500 at most and that’s what a lawyer will cost). The lawyers go up to chat quietly with the prosecutors.
Joe’s probably going to be sent home, possibly with a finger shaken at him.
Now, let’s say this isn’t Joe’s first time in for public intoxication. He went to a really wild frat party a couple of years ago. This is something I have less personal experience with, but I’m willing to concede that if A) he has a record, B) he does not get a lawyer or retain a public defender, and C) there is evidence on the books that he was in fact intoxicated at the time, then it is POSSIBLE that the judge will seek the maximum fine.
I defy you to show me that this practice is different from other states.
Oh, and one more thing. Texas has this very odd practice called ‘deferred adjudication’. I don’t know if this is currently in effect in Dallas County, but I know we have it where I live.
Essentially, it works in this way:
The defendant pleads guilty.
For a period of either 90 or 180 days, that person must not be arrested on the same charge. So, under the unproven assumption that the Dallas cops are going to keep doing this regularly, he might want to avoid bars for a while.
If the person has not been arrested on another instance of the same charge in that time, then there’s no harm, no foul. The case can even be expunged, though this is not automatic.
I know this looks so very strange regarding a state that has exectuted over 300 people since 1976. I think our capital punishment problems are, however, not so relevant to this discussion as none of the people we’re talking about were arrested in this instance for murder or any other felony or even a class A misdemeanor. The two are not equal and are not treated equally, as far as I know, by any court in the land.
Oh, and I’m not trying to whitewash us in Texas. I just want us to get blamed for what’s REALLY wrong with us. 
The behavior reported in the OP sounds pretty ridiculous to me.
Spanish police often run “preventive alcohol detection” at the door of clubs and bars. What they do is, they test people, show you the result; you have to wait until the figure gets legal before you can drive away. If one person in the group is legal and has a license, he or she becomes the designated driver. I know people who said “ok, yeah I’ll drive but I’d like to wait a bit until You and You cool off some” and well, with the cops there You1 and You2 didn’t dare utter a peep.
Many people are cool with that, “yeah, I had been debating with myself whether to have that last drink or not and now I know if I hadn’t, I would have been ok to drive”. The ones who don’t think it’s cool are the same morons who believe they haven’t had fun unless their whole party got so plastered they can’t remember who drove on the way home.
That’s freakin’ awesome. Preventative rather than punitive.
I agree completely. Not for nothing, but if pocket-carried Breathalyzer ( sp?? ) units were available that were very accurately calibrated, then one could go out for a night of spirited spirts, and blow into one’s unitl, then jack said unit into a small reader at the door. Ping over .08? Go home. Ping close? Maybe some negotiation. Ping almost zip, even though you reek? Your story about your girlfriend dumping rum on your shirt sounds more plausible.
Maybe drunk driving fines can be plowed ( ahem ) back into technology like this. It’d cut down on the kind of shennanigans that precipiated this thread, AND would save lives. Which is, I pray, the point.
If I could blow into my unit I probably would never leave home. 
Not a problem. Before you know it, they’ll be knocking down your door to catch you in the act of blowing into your own unit in the supposed privacy of your own ranch. Oh god, why won’t someone think of the Units??
