Court of Appeals Grants Chris Perri Law Oral Argument on Felony Case

The Corpus Christi Court of Appeals has granted me the opportunity to present formal Oral Arguments on a felony DWI case in which my client was convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. At trial, during which I was not yet his lawyer, the main evidence of my client’s intoxication came from a warrantless blood draw, revealing that his BAC was over the legal limit. Just a few months after my client’s trial, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for an individual’s blood to be drawn during a DWI arrest without a warrant—even if it was the individual’s third DWI. At the time of my client’s arrest, however, Texas law allowed the police to draw a person’s blood without a warrant if that person had two or more prior DWI convictions. However, due to the fact that the Supreme Court’s ruling occurred while my client’s case was pending appeal, I’m arguing that this ruling should apply to his case so that his conviction is overturned and he can be retried without the tainted evidence. The interesting issue on appeal is that because the trial attorneys did not object to the admission of the blood evidence, no error was preserved. Usually, objections are necessary to present an appellate issue because appellate courts require that the trial judge had an opportunity to make a ruling. I plan to fiercely argue that even though the error was not preserved, it represents such a fundamental miscarriage of justice that the appellate court should still reverse the conviction.