Getting off easy — how drunken drivers in Bexar County beat the rap
, a career prosecutor who has served under Reed, LaHood and Gonzales and is now chief of the DA’s grand jury and intake division.Reed also wanted participants to have to plead to “obstructing a highway-intoxication” — a charge she devised by adding the word intoxication to the existing misdemeanor offense. That way, the defendants’ records would reflect an offense involving alcohol, even if not one with the career-wrecking gravity of a DWI.
“The defendant does not have a prior conviction or deferred adjudication for DWI or Obstruction of a Highway;Any deviation from those rules required a supervisor’s approval, the memo said. “My femur popped out of my hip backwards,” recalled Chittenden, now 30 and a machine operator at an Amazon warehouse in Forney, just outside Dallas. “I remember the jaws of life, and then I just woke up in the hospital. They had a rod through my leg.”Chittenden told prosecutors he didn’t want to press charges against Recker, in part because her mother, Shannon Jones, a supervisor in the Bexar County Adult Probation Department, was paying the couple’s rent and his medical bills.
“There were no repercussions for her — less than a slap on the wrist,” said Alysha Clark, Chittenden’s sister. “Somebody that injured somebody and was allegedly at .15 or higher... if I had known that there had been an injury, there’s no way in hell I would have gone with obstruction,” the judge said. “That is an embarrassment to me to have approved that.”, a first DWI is a Class B misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail.
Officer William Kasberg of the San Antonio Police Department’s DWI unit gives a field sobriety test to a motorist he had stopped on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. The man failed the test and was taken into custody. “There is a big culture that involves alcohol,” Kasberg said.Officer William Kasberg of the San Antonio Police Department’s DWI unit gives a field sobriety test to a motorist he had stopped on suspicion of driving while intoxicated.
The change was acceptable to Tharp and other prosecutors because under the 2019 law, if a defendant who benefited from deferred adjudication commits a second DWI, the new charge counts as just that — not as a first offense. This was seen as a way to give first offenders a second chance while coming down hard on those who blow the opportunity and reoffend., D-San Antonio, also a co-author of the bill. “We’ve got to get the habituals off the road, and we’ve got to give someone a second chance.
A breath test showed Gonzalez had a BAC of .158, and he was charged with DWI with enhanced penalties. But prosecutor Trey Mims reduced the charge to obstructing a highway-intoxication in exchange for a guilty plea. As for Gonzalez, police found him sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against a fence post and struggling to stay awake. Gonzalez said his shoulder hurt, and he was loaded into an ambulance, where he became “combative” with emergency responders, a police report said. At University Hospital, a staffer remarked that he “reeked of tequila.”In May 2021, prosecutor Joseph Hooker reduced the charge to driving with a BAC of more than .15, a misdemeanor.
oe Angel Garcia, 43, suffered severe brain, spinal and other injuries after a drunken driver drove a three-ton Lincoln Navigator into Garcia’s motorcycle on Sept. 19, 2021. “The after-effects of it are catastrophic,” said his wife, Elizabeth Guajardo. “He’s not the same Joe and never will be.” In August 2017, Hilario Martinez was driving a pickup when he ran a red light at Guadalupe Street and South Hamilton Avenue on the West Side and struck an SUV.
That felony charge began to unravel when Roy Rohrer, an investigator for the Bexar County DA’s office, sent a letter to Dr. Susannah Nicholson at University Hospital, who treated Guitron after the crash. Joe Angel Garcia, 43, struggles to climb a set of steps at Warm Springs Rehabilitation Hospital. Garcia suffered severe brain, spinal and other injuries after a drunken driver drove a three-ton Lincoln Navigator into his motorcycle on Sept. 19, 2021. “He’s not the same Joe and never will be,” said his wife, Elizabeth Guajardo.Elizabeth Guajardo watches as her husband, Joe Angel Garcia, 43 struggles to climb a set of steps at Warm Springs Rehabilitation Hospital.
In the end, despite the collision, the previous arrest and his high BAC, Pantoja was allowed to plead guilty to obstructing a highway.“I really don’t have an answer for why the prosecutor reduced that,” Angulo said. “I disagree with that.”
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