Wednesday June 3, 2009

I got up early this morning to go to Angleton for a trial on a case I had participated in when I worked in Manvel. I had gotten a search warrant to take a blood sample from the suspect when he refused to give the sample. This search warrant was a first for me and as far as I know, a first for the police dept. Actually, I don't know of many officers that have done a search warrant for blood. The suspect had already been arrested for two felony DWI's and was out on bond, so our charge was his third felony DWI charge. The results of the blood-alcohol test were almost three times the allowed amount and the sample was taken five hours after his arrest! As it turned out, he had already been convicted in one of his prior cases after just 17 minutes of jury deliberation, so we were being used in the penalty phase of the trial in an effort to get more penitentiary time for him. I learned that the District Attorney's office had requested 25 years to life as his punishment.



My testimony went very well. The defense attorney began objecting almost as soon as I had given my name and former job title. Most of his objections were overruled by the judge, so I wasn't on the witness stand for very long. I had almost forgotten how much fun it is to go up against one of these type of lawyer.

I left the courthouse as soon as I was excused and headed back to Alvin where I had found diesel fuel for $2.15 a gallon at the Murphy Bros. station at the Wal Mart. I filled up my new 100 gallon tank and wanted to save as much as I could. I saved at least .14 per gallon so it was worth the trip back to the store. I did not fill the regular truck tank until I got back to Port Arthur. I stopped at Crawdad's, a convenience store that Bill goes to all the time. I took on 15.4 gallons of diesel at $2.39 per gallon to go 282 miles for an 18.3 mog average.


I came on back to Camp Sims, but soon after I got here it started to rain. The thunder and lightning was very impressive, so we didn't get our work done in preparation for leaving tomorrow morning. as soon as it cleared off, Bill and I got everything done tonight that we could do, and hooked the trucks up to our trailers. We are as ready as we can be to leave first thing in the morning.

Stella and Ornell went to the store to buy the things we need to have for the road trip, so we should be ready to go tomorrow.

Indiana here we come......