By Deandra Grant, J.D., M.S. (Pharmaceutical Science), ACS-CHAL Forensic Lawyer-Scientist If you were just arrested for assault or assault family violence in Texas, the first thing you need to understand is what you are actually charged with because “assault” in Texas covers a much wider range of conduct than most people realize, the penalties vary […]
By Deandra Grant, J.D., M.S. (Pharmaceutical Science), ACS-CHAL Forensic Lawyer-Scientist You didn’t drive anywhere. You pulled into a parking lot, or you never left the spot where you were parked. The car may have been running. You may have been asleep. But you didn’t drive. Can you still be convicted of DWI in Texas? The […]
By Deandra Grant, J.D., M.S. (Pharmaceutical Science), ACS-CHAL Forensic Lawyer-Scientist When law enforcement seizes your phone in connection with a criminal investigation, the clock used to work in your favor at least a little. Processing a device, extracting the data, and having a forensic analyst make sense of thousands of messages, location pings, and call […]
Criminal cases increasingly turn on digital evidence. Prosecutors use data from phones, computers, GPS records, surveillance cameras, social media accounts, and cloud storage to build their cases. They present this evidence as if it were objective and irrefutable and many defense attorneys accept it at face value because they lack the technical knowledge to evaluate […]
By Deandra Grant, J.D., M.S. (Pharmaceutical Science), ACS-CHAL Forensic Lawyer-Scientist The difference between a drug possession charge and a drug delivery charge in Texas is not just the severity of the offense. It is often the difference between a misdemeanor and years in prison. Manufacture or delivery of a controlled substance in Penalty Group 1 […]
Effective today (March 31, 2026) the Texas Department of State Health Services smokable hemp regulations are in effect. Hemp flower, pre-rolled joints, live rosin, live resin: off compliant store shelves. The rules adopt a “total THC” calculation that includes THCA, and since most smokable hemp products contain THCA well above 0.3%, they no longer meet […]
By Deandra Grant, J.D., M.S. (Pharmaceutical Science), ACS-CHAL Forensic Lawyer-Scientist Money laundering prosecutions are among the most technically complex criminal cases a defendant can face. The investigations are often long-running, the evidence is predominantly financial, and the charges can come from state authorities, federal prosecutors, or both simultaneously. Many people facing money laundering charges did […]
Of all the scientific challenges to blood test accuracy in DWI cases, coelution may be the most technically significant and the least understood by defense attorneys. Coelution occurs when two or more chemical compounds exit the gas chromatography column at the same time, causing their detector signals to overlap. When this happens, the instrument cannot […]
The Intoxilyzer 9000 measures the amount of alcohol in a breath sample using infrared spectroscopy. It assumes that all detected alcohol came from deep lung air and represents the defendant’s blood alcohol concentration. But several common medical conditions can introduce substances into the breath that the instrument misidentifies as ethanol — or that elevate the […]
The prosecution’s blood test result in your DWI case is only as reliable as the integrity of the blood sample it was derived from. If the sample was contaminated at any point (during collection, transportation, storage, or analysis) the BAC result does not accurately reflect the alcohol concentration in your bloodstream at the time the […]