Posted: 12/20/2004 7:32:21 PM EDT
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It says on the Texas CHL website that anyone convicted of a felony cannot get their permit. My question is that it also asks if you have ever been indicted or put on probation for a felony and had it dismissed you must answer yes or no. At age 18 I had a big misunderstanding with the law on what so happened to be September 11th of 01 and I was charged with felony EVA (evading arrest) which was a weird deal starting off because EVA wasnt a fellony til September 1st of 01... horrible timing... I did my probation (not parole) and community service and actually got off of it early and the whole thing was dismissed. So is that hickup going to effect me getting my CHL. Any input would be great. Also any information about having this type of thing getting exponged off record would also be helpful. Thanks |
There is a huge misunderstanding in Texas regarding unadjudicated probation. If you did probation the charge was NOT dismissed. You may have been found not guilty at the end of your community supervision. For CHL purposes an adjuication of guilt or order of deferred adjudication is a conviction. That is straight from my CHL instructor's handbook. regarding Expunctions; http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/statutes/cr.toc.htm scroll down to chapter 55. That is the law for Expunctions in Texas |
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I thought that was the whole purpose of deferred adjudication - to avoid a conviction on your record. My understanding is that you plead guilty (or no contest) but the judge defers any finding of guilty while you serve out your probation or other "sentence". Upon successful completion of your probation, the charges are dismissed - no conviction. If you screw up your probation, the judge proceeds to find you guilty (based upon your earlier plea) and you then have a conviction. Not doubting that your CHL handbook says otherwise, but I would like to know if it cites any statute or case law for that statement. If a successful DA leads to a conviction and prohibits you from buying weapons or qualifying for a CHL, then there seems no point in having a DA procedure, and lots of people are being misled into entering pleas based upon the (mistaken) belief that they won't have a felony conviction if they live out their probation. |
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I guess I will just call the DPS office... I had sent an email to the chl office and they replied back saying that since it was not a conviction that I was ok... but I dont want to go waste $140 just because person that gets paid $12 an hour to answer back emails probably know nothing about it. I have left a message with my lawyer to try to have them explain all this to me but who knows when he will call me back... Thanks for all the help so far. I have not bought a gun since all this has happened. Thanks Again Edited to agree with Jolly_Roger about his view on DA, I was under the impression that It was not going to be on my "record" and it still shows up when I apply for apartments... It was/still a big hassle and the moral of the whole thing is: Stop when you see any kind of flashing lights... |
For speeding tickets, yeah. I do not think you can do that for FELONIES. Can you? |
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I think you can - remember the District Attorney has to agree to do it, as it is a "plea bargain" type of deal. Of course, to do it on a felony, you would probably have to have an otherwise spotless record, etc. In this age of computerized records, it is easy for something to stay on some computer somewhere. For instance, even if charges against you are dropped, the local PD computer will still have a record of your arrest - and that might be what is showing up. Also, at the end of probation, if the judge does not sign a written order dismissing the charges, the computer records may indicate the case is still open. This happened to a friend of mine - he applied for a CHL and was refused and told that a case was pending against him. Turned out, it was an old case from 20 years ago! The case had been dismissed, but somehow that fact never got put into the computer. He had to go pull the actual file at the courthouse, and send a copy of it to Austin to convince them the case was dismissed. |
Deferreds are done all of the time. However, for CHL and even security guard pusposes it is considered a conviction. When a person receives a deferred, that fact stays on the record. I am a CHL well as Texas DPS certified Classroom and FIrearms instructor for Security Guards. If the thread starter can tell me the exact charge and disposition, or better yet PM me., I can help more. |
It's not always that simple, which is why I don't like the fact that evading arrest was upped to a felony charge. I was charged with evading arrest by an HPD officer doing a morning commute speed trap once. It was a completely unfair charge based on my misunderstanding of their f*ked up speed trap. I got out of it with the help of a lawyer for around ~$500 (this was back when this wasn't a felony charge), but I could imagine others in my situation might've just been screwed without a decent lawyer on their side. As to how I was mistakenly (in my opinion anyways) charged for evading (And let me preface this by saying that I was new to Houston and new to driving in Houston, so that colors a lot of my reaction to the whole thing): I was coming down a highway feeder, having just exited the freeway (US 59 down near bellaire area if I recall correctly, it was several years ago). I was flowing with traffic doing about 55 in either a 40 or 45 mph zone. I was in the slow lane. There was a large concrete barrier to wall off the nearby neighboorhood from the freeway/feeder noise/danger. At the stoplight ahead, the concrete wall gives way to a shopping center that sits on the corner of the intersection, with a gas station and a strip mall of sorts and lots of parking lot space. As I came down towards the intersection, I noticed a big dump truck type vehicle sitting at a dead stop in my slow lane (I was planning to make a right turn at the light), fully stopped with his hazard lights on. Just as I was deciding to change lanes to avoid him (well ahead of time), a cop stepped out from behind his hiding spot (in the parking lot, hidden by the big conrete neighboorhood wall) into my lane waving his arms. He was of course part of a team of cops hanging out on foot in the parking lot, hidden from view, doing a speed trap. He stepped out into the lane to wave me into the parking lot for processing with the other 20 or so drivers they had queued up like cattle getting tickets in the parking lot. But I misinterpreted this (having never seen an "industrial-style" speed trap before), and thought he was waving me out of the lane in general because of the stopped truck, which I had already taken into account and was already about to do. So I changed over a lane, went right past the cop (at that point I could finally see all his freinds, the cop cars, the flashing lights, and lots of cars in the lot), right past the stopped truck, then got back in the slow lane to make my right turn. Having seen all this commotion and police presence in the parking lot, I was left wondering what the hell was going on, so instead of heading on to my right-turn, I pulled in early into the parking lot itself (but now downstream a little ways from the big traffic-stop mess). I stopped my car in the parking lot, stared at all the cops and people - still didn't understand what exactly was going on, but didn't see any cops signalling to me or running at me either - and then proceeded to roll off slowly through the parking lot, heading towards another exit to get back on my merry way. I get halfway through the parking lot, around a corner from all the commotion, and an HPD Camaro comes burning rubber around the parking lot with his lights blazing, pulls me over in the parking lot. Tells me it's a speed trap, they clocked me for speeding back on the feeder, and he was also slapping me with evading arrest because I didn't pull in when he asked me to (back when he stepped out in the feeder and waved me). The whole thing was a bunch of bullshit, the cop was a real asshole about it (even the lawyer I later hired, upon seeing his name on the ticket said, "Yeah I know this guy, he's a real asshole"). I'd be a hell of a lot more pissed if this had happened to me more recently and it had been a felony charge an I couldn't get it dismissed. |
I take your account at face value, and it sucks that you got stuck with the eviding. I have a question about the trap. What were they using as bait? How did they lure you there? |
I defer. I remember a friend going through the same hassle for a different set of circumstances but a misunderstanding just the same and a charge of evading.  |
Well, not that kind of trap  Yes, I was violating the law by speeding, but I have a big problem with "speed trap" setups. The purpose of traffic laws, and the speed limits in particular, should be to promote safe driving and reduce accident rates, not to prop up the city/county/state's coffers. If a cop out on patrol sees a guy driving "dangerously" in his honest professional opinion, I have no problem with him pulling the guy over for speeding and whatever other traffic laws the guy may have violated - but when the traffic would otherwise be rather smoothly and safely sailing along with a bunch of relatively safe drivers going over the limit like they always do, and there's an assembly-line style speed-trap set up on the side of the road pulling them over in droves, I have a big problem with that. It's just a randomly-applied tax on the driving public. It especially burns me when they set up on commuter routes during commuter time periods, as they're specifically targetting people who are more likely than average to be somewhat responsible tax-paying job-holding law-abiding citizens to boot. I used to live near Allen Parkway for example, and there was a routine speed-trap set up at least once a month at a certain spot on Allen Parkway, right around 5pm catching downtown officer workers commuting out of the city, usually for going 10 over the limit. The same road at 1-3am-ish every night routinely has drunk drivers going 30+ over the limit, and no cops around speed-trapping at that time  And don't get me started on whether the existing speed limits are reasonable safety limits. Most of them are hogwash and they're politically/money-driven rather than science-driven. I know about the TX system of measuring traffic flow rates over a period of time on a road, throwing out the top X pct, and averaging the rest to come up with new speed limits on roads. The problem is that the measuring is done without announcement, with the current speed limits still in place and the "ticket fear factor" still holding people within certain limits of the limits. A more visible, announced system would be better if your'e going to base the limits on average driver speeds on a road. But really, a more scientific process based on the design of the road (what barriers / distance on the sides, what's there next to the road (grass, parking lot, sidewalk, someone's front yard, etc), how many lanes, quality/evenness of the surface, frequency of intersections and/or exit/entrance ramps, radius of any curves/corners in specific areas of the road) would be much better. |
Hooooo boy. Please, PLEASE tell me you're not a "revenue generator" advocate... Edit: those officers, instead of sitting on their fat asses with a radar/laser gun could be doing MUCH more good patrolling. Must be pretty tough work, sitting behind cover with a radar/laser gun. Man, doing God's work, I tell ya. |
I am just pointing out that when you choose the behavior you choose the consequence. I assume we are all adults and know the law. Thats all. We could probably have a pretty interesting discussion about revenue generation, etc. |
I think we already are. If you took a very clandestine survey of the speeds on various streets and highways around Houston, you'd find that the speed limits are in general fairly useless. I would wager that over half of all drivers routinely treat them as a minimum rather than a maximum. I would also posit that these drivers aren't really causing a big problem by doing so. It makes the limits look like of arbitrary and pointless, and it makes the revenue traps look downright immoral. If it's truly of such consequence that people not exceed the aribtrary signage on our roads, then why doesn't TX require all registered TX vehicles to contain some electronic device thatwatches your car's speed from the inside and send a radio signal to all the nearby cops when you go over? Is it because: A) Half the cars on the road would be emitting this signal at any given time, which would probably break the system B) Strictly and uniformly enforcing the speed limits that so many laugh at would cause an armed revolt C) A stupid little thing like "normal" speeding simply isn't worth the effort or D) Because even if it did work like a charm, then nobody would be speeding at all anymore, and you'd lose your great little source of revenue |
E it would cost a gazillion dollars and be nearly impossible to implement. And I do not agree that revenue generation is the major purpose of spped enforcement. |
1) Cheaper to just lower the governors on vehicles from 99 MPH (my Chevy Truck) to whatever. 2) Here in North Texas the major purpose of speed enforcement is to comply with Clean Air requirements as per a settlement with the EPA. Reducing speed limits and stepping up enforcement is one of several compromises (yearly emissions testing is another) North Texas made in a settlement with EPA after having poor air quality for the last decade or so. |
That, we agree on. |
You left out the motorcycles that race thru there @ speeds of 100+ oh well late at night is when free coffee and donuts taste the best!!! Back to the topic.... Check with your lawyer and go from there...I would make him check it out for you...You took the deferred adjudication which means he did not do much work on his end. BTW this is one of those easy money making deals for lawyers. 9 times out of 10 if you didn't kill someone you can get it on most first time offences. |
I can't argue that speed limits do in fact affect car emissions. A quick search on the web turned up numerous scientific studies that showed how raising speed limits results in increased harmful emissions from passenger vehicles. However, one thing I didn't see anywhere, but I wish someone could show me, was what percentage of TX pollution comes from passenger vehicles to begin with, as opposed to factory pollution, commercial vehicle pollution, and "imported" pollution that floats up from Mexico, etc... I know we have a lot of cars travelling a lot of miles in TX, but I still find it hard to believe that they produce more emissions than other sources in general. |