Law Offices of Chris Raesz, P.C.
Criminal cases
TWO AGGRAVATED FELONIES
My client
was charged with two felonies. Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and
Unlawful restraint causing serious bodily injury. Both charges were tried
together. The alleged "victim" had fabricated the events of the evening. My
client was asleep in bed when the police surrounded him and accused him of
having a knife. The case was complicated by the fact that my client, at the time
of his arrest, was on parole. He spent months in jail until we managed to get a
jury trial.
Result: Two Not Guilty verdicts
THEFT
My client was charged with
the theft of an iPhone. I set up two issues for an appeal. The first was
improper testimony on cell phone tracking. The other was illegally obtaining
evidence (the police burglarized my client's car). At the conclusion of the
State's case, they had not managed, in my opinion, to link my client to the
iPhone being taken.
Result: 20 minute Not Guilty verdict
ASSAULT
My client was charged with
assaulting a fellow inmate in the Denton County Jail and the prosecutors
enhanced him due to his prior convictions. Our wonderful district attorney's
office had actually retrieved my client from prison for a pending misdemeanor.
After that misdemeanor was resolved, the prison officials took their time coming
to retrieve him as he had another four years to complete his prison sentence.
One of the other inmates created a situation in the "tank" my client was in. My
client believed that this other inmate, who had just been transferred to my
client's "tank" due to fighting with another inmate in the other "tank", was
about to hit him. Knowing this, a fight ensued. It was on video.
Result:
Not Guilty verdict
(Frankly, this is a good example
of our DA office not properly assessing a case. They had no viable way, in my
opinion, to call the "victim" and I'm pretty sure they didn't want to put him on
the stand because he only spoke Arabic and some smattering of English. Further,
I'm sure they would have loved to have me go into the pending Aggravated Assault
charge on him.... I'm not entirely confident that my abilities created this
result but it is what it is.)
MOTION TO PROCEED WITH ADJUDICATION
My client, as a result of her medical conditions,
accepted a plea bargain resulting in being on deferred adjudication for 2 years.
Almost immediately after being placed on deferred, this client had significant
issues with her son's "baby-momma" and was arrested for criminal mischief. I
tried everything I could to resolve the case without a hearing [which typically
results in a trip to prison] and, understandably, it did not work. At the
hearing, I pointed out the issues with all the players and the probation
department.
Result: Client was allowed to be continued on deferred.
(Once again, I am unsure as to whether this
result was obtained due to my efforts or the fact that my client had SERIOUS
medical issues. I did manage to bring all of those issue forward for the judge
to hear by way of subpoenaing the proper witnesses and cross-examining the
State's witnesses on their position. I guess, in the end, I did have some part
to play in the situation, but I am not willing to accept full responsibility for
this outcome.)
AGGRAVATED ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY WEAPON
This case was tried twice. Essentially, the prosecution believed that the client was the shooter in a really large murder-for-hire scheme. The first trial resulted in a 60 year sentence. Myself and two other attorneys objected constantly to the evidence having no bearing or relevance to the client. The appellate court agreed and remanded the case for a new trial. The second trial was shorter due to the prosecution being told not to do what they did last time. We again objected to much of their evidence.
Result: Client was found not guilty in under two hours.
(If you want a really good example of how broken our criminal justice system is, this client is currently being prosecuted for "conspiracy" in the murder-for-hire scheme [at the time of my posting this he will have been in jail another five months] despite being found not guilty in the aggravated assault case arising out of the same facts. We have objected to this as being barred by double jeopardy [or a flavor of it] and we hope to ultimately prevail on this issue.)
ASSAULT FAMILY VIOLENCE
I got appointed to represent this client as his second attorney to two felonies and one misdemeanor. His first attorney and he had a serious disagreement about how to proceed. I came in and agreed with the client that everything should be taken to trial. Covid shut down a lot so we were on the felony jury trial docket forever with the misdemeanor waiting. As of the day of this trial, my client had 679 days back credit. When we hit number one on the trial docket in the felony court, the prosecutor asked me what my guy would take. I repeated myself and told her a simple misdemeanor assault, no family violence finding on the Sexual Assault and dismiss the Assault by Impeding just to be done with it. She wanted a family violence finding and I told her no. She then agreed to what I wanted. Once that was done, I asked for the exact same thing in the misdemeanor, given his huge back time and to get him out of jail. I went up the chain and the supervisor told me no. Apparently, despite the issues with the case, they really wanted a family violence finding. So I filed a habeas because his bond for a class A was $30,000, which I thought would be hard to make happen BUT I wanted a vehicle to get a trial done quickly. The judge passed on the writ when I said either or, reasonable bond or quick trial. The issue of jury came up and I said we would waive it. The State agreed. Then they sent me a ton of jail calls. They were really pretty bland. Absolutely nothing threatening or incriminating. They also sent me certified police reports with one of the two cops reporting that she said my client hit her in the head. The day they served her with a subpoena, the prosecutor emailed me that she told the investigator she might have COVID and they wanted to move the trial. I refused to move the trial. After they called her to the stand and she didn't show, they went right into the strangest pretrial hearing about forfeiture by wrongdoing. They played some of the calls which were pretty useless in my opinion. Despite what to me was obvious, the judge agreed with them about the forfeiture by wrongdoing issue. My client now completely understands why he needs to stay off the jail phones which I tell every client to do. They attempted to use documents and a video that showed nothing from her about any hitting. I shut all the documents down. I argued nothing showed any injury. The State argued that at X:XX on the video she said he hit her in the head and made a motion like a fist towards her head. So the judge rewatched the video. I was right, but sometimes being correct doesn't win in court. The judge took a break and then came back to tell us his verdict.
Result: Client was found not guilty.
(I used to work with a lawyer that said "pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered". Seems to work here.)
ANIMAL CRUELTY
I got appointed to represent this client as her second attorney to this misdemeanor. It was an odd appointment because there had been no activity that would merit a substitution. I called her first attorney about the substitution and was informed that they refused to represent anyone alleged to have harmed a dog. This attorney apparently looked at the charge and immediately made the decision that they client was guilty of what was alleged. (I tend to think that is not the job of a defense attorney, but what do I know.) I gathered the discovery and this prosecution was centered around 7 seconds of video. That and the fact that my client's ex-husband has a serious problem in dealing with the fact that my client no longer wanted to be married to him. To the point that he had been charged with assaulting my client, but this DA's office still moved forward on this animal cruelty charge with him as their shining witness. The discovery showed that he waited until after he had been charged with assault to report this "animal cruelty", he had not reported issues with the dog and there were no trips to a vet to remedy any issues. While I will agree that, on the day in question, my client totally lost it, she had been, of course, harassed by her soon-to-be-ex to that point. I, apparently stupidly, was unaware of the difficulties in trying one of these cases to a jury. The potential jurors all believe prior to hearing any evidence that any harm of any sort to any pet of any sort is automatically a guilty verdict. It did sort of look uphill during jury selection. Essentially, the events here did not show any harm, but I will agree that it looked bad. Apparently, the jury saw the same thing I did. Lesson learned here about the jury issues with these cases.
Result: Client was found not guilty.
Civil Rights cases
HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT
This case
concerned a racially hostile work environment where one of the local prosecutors
had a conversation with the only African-American prosecutor referencing
"hanging people from trees" and a "white pointy hat". The case was tried in June
2012. Testimony was interesting and the individuals in charge clearly did not
understand the situation.
Result: Jury verdict for the plaintiff of
$510,000
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© 2009 Chris Raesz, P.C.
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