Irving DWI Lawyer

An Irving DWI Is a Dallas County Case

You were stopped in Irving, but the case is not an Irving case.

Dallas County prosecutes it, and Dallas County hears its criminal cases at the Frank Crowley Courts Building. Misdemeanors are set in the County Criminal Courts and felonies in the Criminal District Courts, in the same building. The city where the stop happened decides very little about what happens next.

That reframes what you are actually shopping for. A lawyer with an Irving address has no advantage in a building they do not appear in. What helps is someone who is in the Frank Crowley courts regularly and knows how the specific court your case landed in runs its docket.

The full county walkthrough is on Dallas DWI Lawyer, and the building is covered on the Dallas County courthouse guide.

Dallas County Has No DWI Diversion

This is the fact that changes the plan, and it is the one most people are surprised by.

Some Texas counties run a diversion track that can keep a first DWI off a record if the person qualifies and completes it. Dallas County does not have one for DWI. Its DIVERT program covers drug cases only. A neighboring county may have a program while Dallas has nothing, for the same facts.

What follows from that is straightforward. In Dallas, the route to a better outcome runs through the evidence rather than around it: whether the stop was lawful, whether the testing was done correctly, and whether the State can prove intoxication at the time of driving. There is no program to qualify for instead. Both directions still have real uncertainty, and neither outcome is certain in any case.

More on what the alternatives look like elsewhere: Pretrial Diversion and Deferred Adjudication.

Dallas Tests Its Own Blood

Dallas County analyzes DWI breath and blood at SWIFS, its own county lab, rather than sending specimens to the state DPS lab.

That is not a detail. A different lab means a different set of records, a different method, a different maintenance history, and a different set of people whose work can be examined. Dallas County also runs no-refusal periods, which means a breath test refusal often becomes a warrant and a blood draw the same night. So a refusal here frequently does not keep a number out of the case.

A number is where a defense starts, not where a case ends. The warrant affidavit, the draw, the chain of custody, the preservation, the analyst’s method, and the instrument’s own record are each separate points to examine.

See Can a DWI Blood Test Be Wrong?, Blood Search Warrants, and No Refusal Weekends.

Is There a Deandra Grant Law Office in Irving?

No. Deandra Grant Law has six offices: Dallas, Fort Worth, Allen, Denton, Rockwall, and Waco. There is no Irving office.

Irving is a service area, which means the firm represents people arrested there and appears in the courts that hear their cases. The Dallas office is the one that covers Dallas County cases, which is where an Irving DWI is heard.

Your License Case Is on a Separate Clock

The criminal case and the license case are two different proceedings, and the license one moves first.

The license case is administrative, it belongs to the Texas Department of Public Safety, and the deadline is 15 days from the arrest to request an Administrative License Revocation hearing. Requesting that hearing on time is what stays the suspension while the hearing is pending. Missing the deadline is what makes the suspension automatic, and nothing in the criminal case fixes it later.

Start with The 15-Day Rule, then The ALR Hearing and How Long Your License Is Suspended.

Where to Read the Rest

By charge: DWI First Offense, Second and Third DWI, Felony DWI. By evidence: Field Sobriety Tests. Everything else starts at the DWI library.