Tony focuses his practice on DWI defense. He has a passion for defending people against DWI’s because it allows him to use his former training as a biomedical engineer to find errors that the nurse made in drawing blood, or where the lab tech screwed up in testing the blood, or whether the breath test machine was not operating correctly. All of these technicalities can result in getting your DWI dismissed.
Tony became a lawyer to protect people from cops. In 2011, Tony was out with his friends in downtown Austin celebrating a friend’s birthday. Marco drove everyone downtown and he was going to drive everyone back at the end of the night. When the night was over, everyone got in Marco’s car and headed back. On the way, Marco stopped the car to drop off a friend at her apartment. When Marco pulled over, a police officer immediately turned on his siren. No one had no clue what was going on. The officer got out of his car and walked towards Marco’s side of the car, and asked him where he was coming from. He replied, “Downtown.” The next question the officer asked him was “How many drinks have you had?” Marco answered, “Two drinks the whole night.” The officer then asked him to step out of his car. Marco complied and the officer told him he was going to perform sobriety tests on him now. At this point, Marco was already going to jail because sobriety tests were designed for people to fail. And indeed, after a few minutes, the police officer told Marco to put his hands before his back, and he was handcuffed and taken to jail.
Once the police made up his mind that Marco had a few drinks, Marco was going to get taken to jail no matter what. Marco cooperated with the officer, but he just gave the state more evidence for them to use against him. If Marco refused to cooperate, the officer was still going to take him to jail. So there was no way out, especially if Marco was innocent.
Fortunately for Marco, he was smart enough to hire a lawyer to help him reduce his punishment. After several months of court dates and negotiating with the prosecutors, Marco got his DWI reduced to a parking ticket for parking in a no parking zone.
This meant that Marco could move on with his life without this cloud hanging over him.
Tony is a member of the DUI Defense Lawyers Association, a national organization of DWI lawyers who are all committed to DWI defense. He attends at least 8 seminars every year to learn from other top attorneys in the country so he can come back and better defend his clients.