Hey guys. I need help. Does anyone have a personal relationship with the DA in Panola county or have an attorney friend with a good working relationship with the court system there?

Tell us generally what happened and we can let you know if you are going through the proper channels in the first place. Access to the DA and "working with the court system" are two different things.

I actually called the DA and he directed me to call the arresting officer and the judge that issued the arrest warrant.

A teacher drove my children to a school function while intoxicated. Once they reached the location (in Panola County) my son alerted the authorities but when they arrived the vehicle was stopped and the keys weren't in the ignition so, after failing two sobriety tests she was arrested and taken to jail receiving a public intoxication ticket.

After talking to my attorney in Gregg county, he told me the charge can be upgraded to a felony DWI (it will be her third) of the officer goes before the judge and requests it. However, he said Panola county is historically lenient on offenders.

The JP was Larry Fields and the officer was Callahan Malone.

Yikes! You should also report that to the Superintendent / School Board / Principal. Someone like that doesn't need to be working with children.

paigerocks said:

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I actually called the DA and he directed me to call the arresting officer and the judge that issued the arrest warrant.

A teacher drove my children to a school function while intoxicated. Once they reached the location (in Panola County) my son alerted the authorities but when they arrived the vehicle was stopped and the keys weren't in the ignition so, after failing two sobriety tests she was arrested and taken to jail receiving a public intoxication ticket.

After talking to my attorney in Gregg county, he told me the charge can be upgraded to a felony DWI (it will be her third) of the officer goes before the judge and requests it. However, he said Panola county is historically lenient on offenders.

The JP was Larry Fields and the officer was Callahan Malone.

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The judge doesn't bring the charge, that would be the state. They use an indictment to do so, basically goes before a grand jury. In order for that to happen, the arresting officer will need to bring the case to the DA.

The tricky part here is proof that they were intoxicated while driving the kiddos (that is a state jail felony dwi with minor on board). Is there someone that could testify as to that fact? Otherwise they can say "hey I got drunk after I parked the kids".

Would the text from my son be evidence enough?

Sorry, i didn't read your original post clearly. The child's testimony is enough to show she was drinking while driving. The text obviously corroborates that as well. In TX, intoxicated is not having your usual mental faculties, OR not having the use of your normal physical faculties OR a test over .08 (so three different things); due to the introduction of drugs/alcohol/any other substance. If your kid can say she had been drinking out of the cup, was swerving, driving too fast, driving too slow, missing lights, knocking things over, etc that could show loss of normal use of mental or physical faculties.

Public intox is a different standard. Its being intoxicated to the level that you are a danger to yourself or others (lower standard than DWI intox). The problem here is that they didn't do a field sobriety test (based on what is in the PC affidavit). That's some low level police work for not investigating the DWI claim, unless there are other factors at play (no clue what that would be).