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Law Offices of Jamie Balagia represent Leonardo Quintana - November 10, 2010
Press release from the Law Offices of Jamie Balagia
During a hearing that took less than 30 seconds, University of Texas baseball coach Augie Garrido pleaded guilty to drunken driving in court this morning.
Sentencing was scheduled for April 30.
Garrido said nothing in court, other than entering his plea. Outside the courtroom, he said only that the sentencing “is not up to me. I’m just going to do what’s right.”
Garrido and his attorneys then walked away from a group of reporters.
Austin police have said Garrido was driving a Porsche Cayenne west on Sixth Street at about 1 a.m. Jan. 17 when an officer in the department’s DWI enforcement team noticed the car’s headlights were not on.
After a sobriety test, Garrido told the officer he had five glasses of wine and was intoxicated, police have said.
Garrido has since issued a public apology, calling his actions a “serious mistake,” and said that he would learn from what happened.
UT officials have suspended Garrido for the first four games of the upcoming season, a home series against Illinois-Chicago from Feb. 20-22. He will be paid during his suspension.
Original Post
Open Records and SAPD Nailed Files - By Greg Harman | June 11, 2008
A few interesting points about assembling this week's story on civil rights attorney James Myart.
Firstly, not only was the recently-suspended attorney himself indisposed, but a good chunk of the legal community that have handled cases against SAPD were simply not up to returning phone calls. It creates a challenge, but I'm sure they all have the city's best interests as heart as we at the Current do. Right, fellas?
In any event, the number of closed doors (including the spiritual leader of Mt. Zion First Baptist Church putting the call-block on me) led me into unexpected corners.
Digging around in the city's files ultimately resulted in an interesting interview with a former SA-based defense attorney. The conversation ended up not fitting the overall narrative of "Myart's remains," which hit the racks today. However, he raised some points regarding the challenges that face any attorney operating in SA that I think are worth passing along. Chiefly, first-hand perspective related to the uphill contest that fighting police in court represents and how one firm has sought to overcome that challenge.
Attorneys going up against law enforcement are well-acquainted with jury's predisposition to believe the men and women behind the shield, said Phil Stauffer, a former attorney working for "DWI Dude" Jamie Balagia's office in San Antonio.
After all, a badge goes a long way in the public psyche. You might as well be putting a doctor in a lab coat with a stethoscope necktie on the chair, he said.
"If it ever comes down to your word against this cop's word on the witness stand, the cop's gonna win," said Stauffer.
While Stauffer now practices law in Fort Worth, when he was with Balagia the two understood that their clients needed a more aggressive form of defense. So they started their own investigations into the workings of SAPD, using state Open Records law to get their hands on as much public information about the department as possible.
"They were always going to do background investigations on our people, so we decided we'd just start doing it on theirs," Stauffer said. "We just wanted to look and see if there's ever been anything that we could've used at trial and bam! We just came up with a gold mine."
Today, Balagia has a file room dedicated to police disciplinary reports that is the envy of more than a few others. (Balagia, in keeping with what appears to be a new legal trend, failed to return calls for comment.)
Cases of cover-ups and report falsification proved common, Stauffer said.
"It's scary. It's just downright scary - you can quote me on that - the amount of stuff that's out there that SAPD doesn't seem to be doing anything about."
This post isn't intended as an endorsement of Balagia, per se, but any attorney - and we're sure there are a few - that is utilizing state law on the public's right to know, is doing something right.
You know the press, the more Sunshine the better. Why should "civil society" hold all the cards?
Original Post
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