Texas Criminal Defense Blog

The case against 43-year-old Colleyville resident Tara Mauney for her role aiding local children in vandalizing a neighbor’s house in 2012 was recently dropped after Mauney apologized to the victim and paid for the damages, WFAA reported on August 7. Mauney was facing felony criminal mischief charges for the July 25, 2012 incident of vandalism to a neighbor’s […]

A 12-member jury composed of nine men and three women voted the death sentence for Harlem Harold Lewis III, 21, who was charged with killing 53-year-old Bellaire, Texas policeman Corporal Jimmie Norman and 66-year-old shop owner Terry Taylor in 2012, Click2Houston.com reported on August 6. The jury members deliberated for 12 hours on the decision, considering the testimony […]

Fifty-three-year-old convicted murderer Kenneth Wayne Thomas, who was imprisoned for killing a couple in Dallas in 1986, has been rejected for another competency trial by a Dallas judge, and his punishment for capital murder resumed, The Dallas Morning News reported on July 14. Thomas received a death sentence in 1987 for murdering Fred and Mildred Finch, an […]

The U.S. women soccer team’s 32-year-old goalie Hope Solo pleaded not guilty to the domestic violence charge leveled against her following her arrest at her sister’s house in Seattle on June 21, the Associated Press reported. Solo was told by the city prosecutor not to contact her sister and not to drink alcohol for an indefinite amount of […]

Nineteen-year-old Round Rock resident Jacob Lavoro is facing a sentence of life imprisonment after police authorities arrested him for possession of a 1.5-pound pan of pot brownies, The Daily Chronic reported on June 20. Lavoro, who turned down a plea agreement to have his first-degree felony reduced to a second-degree felony charge at the Williamson County […]

In 1993, 57-year-old Nigerian citizen and Dallas resident Godwin Ojiaku fled the country when he was charged with indecency with a child. Now, over ten years later, he faces federal charge of interstate flight to avoid prosecution, The Dallas Morning News reported on June 1. When Ojiaku left a Dallas County criminal court in 2013, […]

Forty-one-year-old convicted killer Robert James Campbell would have been the first executed by lethal injection after a botched execution in Oklahoma, but Campbell lived to see another day after the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily halted his scheduled execution on grounds that he could be mentally impaired, The Dallas Morning News reported on May 13. Campbell’s attorneys […]

Killeen resident Darius Troy Morrow, 26, is facing state-felony charges of criminal mischief in an amount of more than $1,500 but less than $20,000 after jumping from the second floor of an apartment complex and onto the roof of a vehicle.  Morrow was also charged with misdemeanor assault with bodily injury to a family member. According […]

A report published on Sunday, April 20 in the Austin American-Statesman revealed that long delays at crime labs caused around 21 people in Texas to be imprisoned on drug possession charges even though the substances they had been carrying at the time of their arrests were not illegal. The newspaper found that 14 men and […]

On Monday, April 2 a jury in Val Verde County, Texas found Tommy Lynn Sells guilty of capital murder for the death of a 13-year-old girl and the serious injuries of a 10-year-old girl. According to evidence from the prosecution, 13-year-old Kaylene Harris died after being attacked with a knife. Her body was found with […]