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El Paso Local Area Business Talk
Aaronson Law Firm Criminal Defense Attorney in El Paso, TX
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Interview with Aaronson Law Firm. This episode will cover areas of practice the Aaronson Law Firm Covers. Typical cases he practices. CDL (Commercial Drivers License), DUI/DWI, Expunctions, Occupational Drivers License (ODL), Suspension Appeals, and Traffic Violations.
Mr. Aaronson has proven to help CDL holders keep their licenses and stay on the road driving. The Aaronson Law Firm defends hundreds of cases a year defending Commercial Drivers License holders.
If you need help with a DWI my firm specializes in this area as well. Like every other state, Texas makes it a crime to drink and drive. Under Chapter 49 of the Penal Code, it is unlawful to drive while intoxicated by either alcohol or drugs or a combination of both. This law applies not only to the operation of vehicles but to the operation of watercraft, such as boats or water skis, as well. Being arrested for DWI is a serious matter that can impact your life in numerous ways, from criminal penalties to increased auto insurance, the loss of your license, and a conviction on your criminal record. Many aspects of your arrest can be challenged to put a conviction in doubt. However, you will need a savvy and experienced attorney on your side who knows how to fight back. At Aaronson Law Firm, you can turn to an El Paso DUI/DWI attorney backed by more than 40 years of practice in defending clients of these charges. Our firm knows how vital it is to put an attorney on your case to help you seek optimum results. With our help, you may be able to have charges dropped or reduced or be found not guilty at trial. We know what to look for in uncovering errors and flaws in DUI/DWI cases and will provide 100 percent dedicated effort in defending you.
Another area of practice is expungements. It’s an unfortunate fact that a criminal record can have severe repercussions on your future. Criminal records are easily accessible through online background checks by employers, landlords, educational institutions, professional licensing agencies, and anyone else who needs to inquire about you. This means that you will have to explain your criminal record and possibly be passed over in favor of another candidate or become ineligible for whatever opportunity you seek. This collateral damage can prevent you from pursuing your career of choice, gaining the job you want, or even renting an apartment. Fortunately, Texas has established two different procedures that address this problem. However, they differ in what they can do and you must meet eligibility requirements to achieve them. These are expunctions (often referred to as expungements) and nondisclosure. At Aaronson Law Firm, our El Paso expunction and nondisclosure attorney can review your case to determine if you qualify for either procedure and, if you do, help you navigate the process.
Occupational Drivers License is another area of law I can help with. Having your driver’s license suspended or revoked is a definite hardship in today. With few public transportation options and those available being generally time-consuming and inconvenient, your ability to drive is a precious resource. If you have lost your license, however, you may be able to qualify for an occupational driver’s license, also known as a “restricted” or “hardship” license. You will have to petition for this with the proper court where it will be ruled upon by a judge. Call Today for a free consultation.
Aaronson Law Firm
Address: 7362 Remcon Cir, El Paso, TX 79912
Phone: 915-533-0110
Website: https://www.aaronsonlawtx.com/
Social Media: Facebook
We're here doing another podcast with Michael Aaronson, a lawyer here in El Paso, Texas, who covers a range of legal issues for clients here in town. Michael, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2Doing good, thank you.
Speaker 1Great, great. Okay, well let's get started and let's inform our listeners of a lot of the other stuff that you do here in El Paso. We know that you do traffic tickets, um, but let's talk about your criminal defense practice. Yeah.
Speaker 2Yes.
Speaker 1Okay, great. Well, you know, the first thing I see on your website, um, showing up is you do DUIs and DWIs. Is that a pretty, um, that's pretty common here in El Paso, right? There's a lot of those arrests made every weekend.
Speaker 2Oh, yeah. Uh, I would say that the majority of my cases are probably DWI cases, but by the way, uh, DUI is, uh, is the same offense as dwi, just that in different states they're known sometimes as DUIs driving under the influence and sometimes DWIs driving while intoxicated. But here, you know, here in Texas, it's DWI driving while intoxicated. It's probably the most, uh, common, uh, misdemeanor that we, uh, are hired for. And, uh, El Paso, like all the rest of the cities in Texas, is real big on, you know, you know, all this anti DWI stuff like Mothers Against Drunk Drivers mm-hmm.<affirmative>, so on and so forth. And it didn't used to be like that back in the eighties. Uh, if we were hired on a DWI case, we could just basically get it dismissed outright. But everybody in text, Texas has just become, you know, with the, with the advent of the internet and news and things like that, uh, people hear over and over again about all these terrible, and they are terrible, terrible things when anybody gets hurt by a DWI driver. And, uh, so now that a pendulum has swung totally and the opposite direction and, uh, they're, they're, they're vigorously prosecuted by the District Attorney's office here and every other city in the state of Texas.
Speaker 1Wow, that's interesting. And do you think that Mothers Against Drunk Driving mad was a huge part of that change, wouldn't you say?
Speaker 2Uh, no doubt about it. They, uh, came together and they have, uh, uh, very much influence with regard to how things, uh, now stand in the state of Texas regarding DWI prosecution.
Speaker 1Okay. Yeah, that's pretty interesting. Um, I know you gotta go into a breathalyzer when you get pulled. Uh, if an officer suspects that you've been driving under the influence or while under the influence of dwi, drunk driving, basically, uh, I know that they, they can make you do a field sobriety test.
Speaker 2Well, they can't make you, but they're, what they do is when they, when you get pulled over, they'll, they'll claim that you had either or e and or bloodshot eyes, they could, uh, detect the smell of alcohol, uh, on your person, uh, you know, normal signs of intoxication At that point. Then they normally ask you to do a field sobriety test, which is, which consists of three different type of tests that consists of the, uh, uh, horizontal gaze nystagmus, which is a test where they have your eyes follow an object, and they look for what they call clues, which have to do with the twitching of the eye because, uh, when a person is under the influence of alcohol and their eyes, uh, follow an object, they kind of twitch. So that's the first test they do. The second test they do is called a walk and turn. That consists of taking a certain number of steps, heel to toe, turning around, coming back with the same number of steps and the grade. And the last, uh, test that they do is called a one-legged stand. And all these tests are graded by whatever the police officer picks up in, in the form of what they call a clue. So if you do a walk and turn and you use your hands for balance, that would be a clue. So they would count that against a score. But yeah, they do a field sobriety test, and then what they do is they ask you to take a breathalyzer and or, or give blood voluntarily. And there's, uh, consequences for not, uh, agreeing to take a, uh, uh, or to give a, a voluntary blood sample. And that comes in the form of an action taken by the dps in every single DWI case where they move or request that the court suspend your license. It's 90 days if you voluntarily give a sample and you flunk it by having a blood alcohol of more than a 0.08. And, um, there are, uh, harsher penalties, which is a six month suspension if you refuse to take the test, which puts them in a position where they have to attain, obtain a warrant from a judge to take, actually take your blood. So, yeah, they, uh, they're very vigorous in these prosecutions. Wow, that's pretty crazy. And, and actually in Texas, you can be considered to be legally intoxicated any one of three different ways. You can either have a blood alcohol of 0.08% or higher, or if you have a blood test that comes back lower than that, they'll still proceed to prosecute you under the theory that you either lost the normal use of your mental and or physical faculties. And the way they do that normally is by showing how you did on the field sobriety tests. So they, uh, so basically DWI is having a more than the allowable amount of alcohol or losing the normal uc, your physical faculties, or you, you losing the normal use of your mental faculties.
Speaker 1Wow, that's interesting. So it seems to me that field sobriety test can somewhat be subjective. Do they film that? So you can, let's say you're gonna defend a client. Are you, do you have access to video and you can argue
Speaker 2Yes. Yeah, you do have access. Uh, the, uh, all the different, uh, law enforcement agencies here in El Paso Municipal, uh, the, uh, uh, sheriff, uh, the constables, the dps, they, uh, all, uh, record and video, uh, of the whole event beginning, you know, with several seconds before the stop, because in Texas, you can't just randomly pull over a motorist due to privacy, uh, issues that are pro protected by our constitution. But, um, the, the video will normally begin about a minute or two before the actual, uh, stop is made. And, uh, it'll show whatever the police officer claims was the reason for the, for the stop, which is usually a traffic infraction of some sort, maybe speeding, maybe running a stop sign, just doing anything that would give them an excuse to pull you over. And then once they pull you over, they normally turn on their microphone. And, uh, a lot of, a lot of nowadays, actually just in the recent past, uh, law enforcement has been using what they call body cams, which are cameras worn on the front side of their, of their shirts. And so not only do you have the video, which is taken from the front dashboard of the, uh, police unit, but you also have the body cam video, which shows more of a closeup of the whole encounter.
Speaker 1Wow. Okay. I have another question. When you take a breathalyzer, you said that 0.08, is there stiffer penalties if, like, let's just say you're so wasted that it's like point, I don't know, is there a, a scale to it
Speaker 2Or Yes, yes, there is. Actually. It's, and, and it's interesting that you mentioned that because for the past X number of years, there has been a new law that provides that if you have more than a 15 B a C or blood alcohol content, which is about double the legal limit of 0.08, then what that does is it kicks up a standard 0.08 DWI from a classs B misdemeanor to a class A misdemeanor. And the penalty for a class A misdemeanor is more harsh, whereas a Class B carries a$2,000 maximum fine and six months in jail, the Class A carries a one year, uh, jail sentence along with a$4,000 up to a$4,000 fine. So when you get, uh, pulled over, you don't want to have, well, you don't want to have any alcohol in your system, obviously, but you don't want to have over a 0.15. Of course, plea negotiations can result in the prosecutor's decision to abandon the over 15 and just put it into the category of a regular, uh, class B misdemeanor dwi, where, where it would be if it were just a 0.08.
Speaker 1Got you. Um, what about if it's a second offense
Speaker 2And, and, and those actually carry the same, the same type of, uh, enhancement we call them in, in, in, in law land, but an enhancement is that it kicks it up from, uh, the grade of offense that it was, and it kicks it up into the next higher category of crime. So the fines go up and the jail time, potential jail time goes up. Uh, we can almost always get probation on these things unless maybe it's a, a fifth DWI or something to that effect. And, uh, like I said, they're really, really aggressive with these DWI cases, whereas I mentioned earlier in the eighties, you could just walk over and ask the prosecutor to dismiss it, and they would be pretty much all the time, they were basically just dismissed.
Speaker 1Well, that's interesting. Um, you know, let's go ahead and change subjects a little bit, but kind of related to this, I know you do functions. I wanna know, um, what kind of functions you do and what kind of expunction maybe you can't do. So let's say, you know, you have somebody with a criminal record and they just don't want that on the record. Uh, for example, they're, they're going for a job interview somewhere. Does that expunction make it look like that crime never happened?
Speaker 2Uh, an expunction Well, in Texas there's two different, uh, vehicles by which a person who has had a CRI who has a criminal record can, can minimize the effect of those items on his record. The first, as you mentioned, is an expunction, and that's the best route to go. The other is called a non-disclosure. The difference is that when you get an expunction, you have to be able to demonstrate certain things that the expunction statute requires. And, um, so, and, and one, one thing that is happening with EXPs with DWI cases and misdemeanor cases is that, uh, with the new district attorney having been sworn in, uh, she abandoned a policy that had been in place for about 30 years. That deal that dealt with those persons who committed a crime were arrested, but were admitted to a pretrial diversionary program known as pretrial diversion. In the past, with the old, uh, regime of the DA's office, they made you sign a letter. In order to get into this first offender's program, you had to sign a letter giving up your right to an expunction, because those persons who go through this program are, uh, specifically named as a category of people who are entitled to an expunction. And what an, what an expung. And so the new regime in the DA's office, no, is no longer enforcing those. So we have been successful in going back cases that are 25, 30 years old, and now advising those people of their right to now finally, after all this time, get that, get that arrest off their record. And what an expunction does is that it's an, it's a, it's an order from a court that orders all law enforcement agencies that have any records at all about this person's arrest to destroy those records and or return them to the court. And it's a, and it even allows the person who, uh, received the ction order to deny the existence of the occurrence. In other words, if they were ever to be asked about it, they can actually legally lie and say It never happened. Wow. Because there's no, there's no legal rec, there's no legal record of it anymore. Anyway, uh, there's another vehicle in Texas that, that, uh, is k was kind of, uh, revised recently, and that's called an Order of non-disclosure. And it's not as good as an expunction, but it's kind of the same because it only allows, because nobody can go back and get your criminal history except law enforcement agencies. Now, there are a lot of exceptions under this statute. For example, uh, if you are a licensed agency in Texas, whether it be a barbershop, a bar, you, you, you can still obtain those because of the fact that you're a license, a licensed agent or a licensing agent in the state of Texas. But a non-disclosure is not as good because like I said, law enforcement still keeps the, the records, they just can't disperse those, disperse that information to the general public. But as I said, there's a lot of exceptions to that. And licensing agencies are not the only exception. They're, it's kind of a complicated statute and, uh, we probably don't have time to get into it now, but, uh, there are exceptions. But if you can't get an expunction, uh, you should absolutely get an order of non-disclosure. But if you have a choice, obviously an expunction is the way to go because it totally erases the event off your criminal history. And nowadays with the, uh, technology being what it is with computers, um, everybody ha seems to have the ability to pry into everybody else's background. I've seen people not even being allowed to rent an apartment because they have a, a, a conviction for a small amount of marijuana. I think it's ridiculous. But that is what is happening right now. And, uh, everybody is doing background checks more and more often.
Speaker 1Okay. And what would it normally cost you? An expunction. What's the range?
Speaker 2Uh, I, I charge, I, I charge a thousand. Uh, a lot of lawyers charge more. I'm sure there are also some who, uh, charge less. There's also a, uh,$350 fee that the court files that we can, uh, usually get our clients out of having to pay by getting a waiver based on a document they signed that basically says that they are not financially able to pay the cost, the court costs.
Speaker 1Gotcha. Okay. Well, you know, you do occupational driver's licenses, that's just for people that got a license suspended, but they still need to drive for, say, work or some kind of family obligation. Right?
Speaker 2Yeah. Occupational driver's licenses are really the way to go if you've had your license suspended and whatnot, uh, and are driving without a license. And for the reasons I mentioned earlier, if you get popped a second time for that offense, they can charge it literally in the same category as a dwi.
Speaker 1It looks like your law firm covers a wide range of, um, legal issues. You've been around for quite some time, huh? 40 some years?
Speaker 2Oh, yeah. I've been around. I, I believe I started practicing law in 1975 or 76. And, um, yeah, I've been, you know, I've, I've, I've, I've delved into, you know, several different areas of law. I've enjoyed'em all. Uh, they're, they've all been very challenging. And, um, yeah, here we
Speaker 1Are. And you also do felonies?
Speaker 2Yeah, I do misdemeanors, uh, and felonies. Uh, you know, there's a, there's, there's so many different laws, but, you know, basically there's most of the time DWIs, uh, drug charges, you know, marijuana charges, theft charges, uh, reckless driving. There's just so many different crimes that, you know, are out there, just, you know, that that one person may be charged with, uh, domestic violence cases. We do those also, uh, we also do, um, driver's license, uh, issues such as, uh, suspensions where the DPS takes action to suspend your license. Uh, we do a ton of those. Uh, we also do, uh, we appeal those if necessary, if we don't do well in the original court that it's filed in. And there's a whole process to those. And we're, we're, we've been very, very, very successful with those.
Speaker 1Yeah. You know, it's interesting you bring up those marijuana, the THC and stuff like that, you know, I know New Mexico, it's legal in Texas, it's not, I imagine there's, there's a lot more charges coming this way here in El Paso County because of that, wouldn't you say?
Speaker 2Yes. Uh, that's, that's very, very true. And, um,
Speaker 1Uh, drug paraphernalia charges,
Speaker 2Yeah, they're, they're all over the place. And, uh, yeah, uh, luckily drug paraphernalia is a, uh, classy misdemeanor. And the good thing about those cases is that usually where, when the officers find paraphernalia, they also usually find a small amount of contraband, but they don't usually charge the people with contraband, but rather only with the paraphernalia. And we, we can usually get those off the people's record, and if we can't, we can, if we, if we can't keep it off the rec, well those are, those usually result in deferred adjudication. And once those are done, we can actually even get those expunged so they don't pop up on background criminal on criminal background checks.
Speaker 1Cool. That's pretty interesting. Well, Mr. Aaronson, I really appreciate your time. Again, I think this is very informative podcast and a lot of information to my listeners to kind of just gain an idea of how everything works. So I really do appreciate that. I always leave things off by asking, um, who I'm interviewing. Is there anything else they want to add before we sign off?
Speaker 2Uh, no. Those are basically all the areas of practice. You know, we do felonies, we do misdemeanors, we do DWIs, we do, uh, driver's license issues such as occupational driver's licenses, uh, suspension hearings, uh, appeals of those suspension hearings, uh, non-disclosure orders, and, and that, and every now and then I'll take a case that deals with just anything I seem to be interested in enough to wanna undertake it.
Speaker 1Great. Well, it's the Aaronson Law Firm here in El Paso, Texas. If you wanna reach out to his law firm, his phone number is(915) 533-0110 website, aaronson law tx.com. That's a A R O n S O N L A W tx.com, aaronson law tx.com. Again, he covered all a wide range of the things that he covers. And, uh, what's your address,
Speaker 2Michael? The, the address is 73 62 REM Con Circle. We're on the west side of El Paso. The zip is seven ninety nine hundred twelve, and the phone number is area code(915) 533-0110.
Speaker 1Great. And so all of you listening, you, you can find that contact information. I'll include a link in the podcast as well. So in case you have any legal troubles that we cover today, you can definitely reach out to US Law firm and, um, have him on your side. Well, again, thank you so much, and you take it easy. Okay, Mike, until next time,
Speaker 2Thanks so much for having me.