So You Got Arrested
The Texas justice system can be messy- we talk to the key players to uncover what really happens. Hosted by BRCK Criminal Defense Attorneys, this podcast dives into real stories and hard truths from inside the Texas criminal courts.
We explore what happens after an arrest, how charges are fought, and what it's like to face the court system in places like San Antonio, South Texas, Austin and the Texas Hill Country.
Whether you’ve been arrested, have a loved one in jail, or just want to understand the criminal defense process in Texas, this show gives you raw, unfiltered insight from criminal lawyers, legal experts, and those directly impacted by the system.
So You Got Arrested
New Texas Laws: Jugging, Squatters, and AI
Hold up! The Texas justice system just got a major shake-up, and we're here to break it all down. In this episode, your hosts from BRCK Criminal Defense dive into the wild world of new Texas laws taking effect on September 1st. We're talking about brand-new offenses like jugging 💸, a new felony for squatters 🏠, and a major crackdown on notaries. We also dig into other updates, including changes to jury duty, stricter penalties for those who sell drugs on social media, and how the law is now tackling AI-generated images and sex dolls. Whether you're curious about new punishments for selling copper or what makes an intoxication manslaughter case a first-degree felony, this episode is packed with the insights you need to stay ahead of the curve. Don't get caught off guard by these new statutes; tune in to understand your rights and the legal landscape in Texas. Key Topics Covered Jugging: What is this new offense, and why did the Texas legislature make it a crime? Cracking Down on Notaries: When is it a felony to notarize a document? Squatter Laws: The new laws that give homeowners more power and hand squatters a second-degree felony. Jury Duty Updates: Why you might still get a summons at age 72, and what "contiguous counties" have to do with it. Skimmers and Copper Theft: How new laws are enhancing penalties for these widespread crimes. Social Media & Crime: The new legislation that makes selling drugs on social media a more severe offense. AI and Sex Crimes: We discuss the controversial new laws that make possessing AI-generated images of children and certain sex dolls a felony. Drunk Driving: How a prior DWI conviction can now escalate an intoxication manslaughter charge to a first-degree felony. Prostitution and Pimping: The big change that makes "continuous promotion of prostitution" a first-degree felony. Stay informed, stay safe, and remember, BRCK Criminal Defense has your back.
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The Texas justice system is messy, so let's break it down. You're listening to so you got arrested the podcast that tells you what really happens after an arrest hosted by brick criminal defense attorneys. We talk to the people who've lived it, worked in it and been shaped by it, whether you're facing charges or just want to understand your rights, your options and the smart moves that could change everything. We've got your back.
Speaker 2:So, scott, we're talking about these new laws that were just passed by the legislature and that are being enacted as of September 1st. There are some new offenses that we need to discuss, and, as I was reading through the new laws, there was a new offense, and it's called jugging.
Speaker 3:I had never heard. I had no idea. You had to explain it to me. I had no idea what.
Speaker 2:I had never heard this term, but jugging is now an offense, and jugging is where somebody follows somebody somebody else to a financial institution, atm. What have you with the idea that this person's going to be withdrawing a bunch of cash and then you're going to go and take the cash from them through robbery? However you're going to do it, you're basically stalking them or it's an ambush after they leave a financial institution. And what I thought was interesting is I was so interested in this term. How did the legislature come up with jugging and say, okay, this is going to be the name for the offense. So, apparently, what it was is is. Back in the old days, when you were in high school, people would carry around large sums of money in a jug and then you would get these bad actors.
Speaker 2:That was the 30s, I don't think it may even been before that, but you would get these bad actors who would literally come and steal a jug and so that's jugging. You know they're taking a bunch of cash from you all at once, but now that's a new offense under the law and you know that seems like that would be a good offense. I've heard tales of this type of activity, I read about this stuff online, but we never had a specific offense that addressed that issue here in the state of Texas.
Speaker 3:But we charge them with robbery. It's not like we didn't have anything to use on those things. I mean robbery was fine, and if they had a gun it was an aggravated robbery. But when I first saw jugging I thought maybe did they bop you over the head with a jug.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's stealing from a milkman as he's making his deliveries.
Speaker 3:Milkman, that's from the 30s too. There you go.
Speaker 2:So so we do have other offenses that you know, we have these new offenses that are in place, and so I wanted to go through some of them just to, so our listeners could be updated on on these changes in the law.
Speaker 3:And remember there's too many new laws for us to talk about in a half hour show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these are the ones that we find interesting. But yes, I would-.
Speaker 3:There's stuff about lottery tickets and election code that I'm not sure anybody would ever come up, but so the first things. First, because this does come up, is that now, if a notary ever signs something that the person isn't right in front of them, that has now become a misdemeanor offense.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So this comes up from time to time where somebody will go to a notary and say, hey, I need you to notarize this signature and the person who is purported to have signed that document is not right in front of them. And I'm you know, I'm aware of instances in the past where a notary would just go ahead and maybe they trusted the person. Whatever the case may be, they'd go ahead and notarize that document. Probably was a bad idea. Even before this was a criminal statute, but now it's actually a crime.
Speaker 3:It's actually a crime, and the way a lot of times this comes up is you've got somebody in jail who's going away for five years or something and now he needs his mother to take care of the kids and be able to take the kids to the doctor, and things like that.
Speaker 3:Or handle his financial affairs while he's locked up All that stuff, and so they're not going to let you, they're not going to let me take a notary with me into the jail. Actually, maybe they would say it depends on the jail, right, right, okay, right, but, but the easier thing to do and you can do a power of attorney without having to notarize, actually. But a lot of times the banks won't accept it. Right, okay, but legally it's still good. But so now, yeah, it's, it's going to be a class, a crime, and I haven't read the statute closely enough because we've been doing some notary stuff by Zoom. Right, so does Zoom count as being in the presence?
Speaker 2:I would think it would, because there's a whole certification process, but don't take this as the law. I don't know the specifics of it, but I do know that there's a certification process that people have to go through in order to become online notaries, go through in order to become online notaries. So I don't know if maybe there's some kind of online verification that gets them around this and says, okay, that person was present for the purposes of that online notary.
Speaker 3:And, like the notary I have at my old office before I joined BRICS, she always would make you show an ID and she'd make a copy of it and she'd write it all in her little book.
Speaker 2:Well, that's another thing. So a new change in the law is that the notaries have to maintain that book for 10 years.
Speaker 3:That's part of it. I thought they were always supposed to maintain the book.
Speaker 2:Well, but now it's part of the statute, got it? So now there's a criminal culpability if you're not doing those things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so notaries, be aware they're cracking down on notaries. I didn't know we had a huge problem with bad notaries. A lot of it involves. So it's a misdemeanor if it's just your regular notary stuff, but if it's transfer of property it becomes a state jail felony. So yeah, so be aware of these new statutes. And so they train you when you become a notary. So I'm assuming they train you about whether Zoom works or not. Neither of us are notaries, but I assume the notaries get some kind of training on this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and now there's a criminal punishment attached to these things, so I'm pretty sure it'll be in whatever training they have going forward. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because in theory, all police officers are notarized because they notarize their own charge, things, right. And there was a case actually came up during this legislative session about like an officer was swearing to himself on the charge, on the on the affidavit, and the court said you can't swear to yourself, you got to swear to someone else, right, right, right, right. I digress. Well, let's talk about? Let's talk about squatter laws. Okay, because that's something that's been a problem in Texas. You know, you go away for a few months and all of a sudden there's squatters in your house and it was hard to deal with the getting them out of the house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they would have to go through the whole, you know, getting them evicted, and that eviction process could take months and months, and months and months.
Speaker 3:So they've made some serious penalties now for these squatters. So right now, if criminal mischief is committed in someone's home that's not your home, and it only has to be a thousand dollars or more, it becomes a second degree felony. Wow, so two to 20 years. So, and and and you know, if a squatter's in your house doing any kind of damage, it's going to rise to the level of a thousand dollars Absolutely, and now we can prosecute those people for two to 20 years.
Speaker 2:Right, and so there can actually be an arrest made. That would kind of seem to solve the issue of the squatting.
Speaker 3:And I know the police are getting increased training about the fact that you can go in and pull these people out of there when they're filing false liens and all. And to that point, a first degree felony now is selling a property that you don't own because these squatters were going in like like trying to make like it's their property and then trying to sell the property and then some poor person is out there earnest money.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely take it and run off. It's like selling somebody the brooklyn bridge, right, right, uh, and so so, uh, yes, so now that's a first degree felony for selling property you don't know whereas in the past that may have been something just under a fraud statute and it may have been a lower level felony.
Speaker 2:So it would just be the amount of.
Speaker 3:we'd only be able to prosecute it for the amount of money they took Right. But now it's just a first degree felony.
Speaker 2:Right, right.
Speaker 3:It's a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, interesting.
Speaker 3:Okay, what's next?
Speaker 2:So to me, one of the things that I think our listeners might be interested in is there are changes to jury service, and so I know people get summons for jury duty. So it used to be the case that there was an exemption if you were 70 years of age or older. Now they've changed that. Now it is 75. And we just had this come up in a trial that we had recently over in Nacogdoches County. There were some older people on the jury and we were looking at their ages and you know. So now you can be exempt, but if you're using your age as an exemption, that exemption starts at 75 years of age.
Speaker 3:And of course you're still allowed to serve. But you can take that exemption if you want to.
Speaker 2:Yes, that doesn't mean you're ineligible if you're 75 years of age or older. It just means if you choose to use that exemption, it's available to you. But now if you're 72, you can't say well, I'm 72, therefore I don't feel I should serve, or I think I should be exempt. That no longer applies to you. The other thing that I thought was interesting was there's a change in the law that says if you are in a county that has less than a thousand people, you can actually pull jurors from a contiguous county.
Speaker 3:Oh, I didn't know about that.
Speaker 2:Yes, so that's a huge change, because it used to be the case that you would have to actually pull jurors from a contiguous county. Oh, I didn't know about that. Yes, so that's a huge change, because it used to be the case that you would have to. In order to be on that jury, you would have to reside in that county, but now there's a law that says if the county is small enough and has a population of less than a thousand, you can actually pull jurors from a contiguous county, so long as they're eligible to serve in that contiguous county. Now, the contiguous county, it gets a little complicated, but it has to be part of the same district, and all that means is you have some counties that are so small that they don't have their own court. They share a court with other counties. So that would be the scenario.
Speaker 3:So it's only if the judicial district is a multi-county judicial district.
Speaker 2:That's it. That's when this law applies, so I found that to be very interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so so there's a couple other these. These aren't necessarily. They don't flow naturally, because these laws are all over the place, but I did need to go back on the jugging thing because they've enhanced the penalties for skimmers. The most people know skimmers is like they put something on the a gas pump. That that's you. You're supposed to look when you put your card in to get gas, because some, some people put these skimmers over top of it and it's not just gas pumps.
Speaker 2:You know, I had an instance where, at soda machines, uh, where I was at a hospital I was at a hospital and I used my credit card on a soda machine and then I started getting these illegal charges or these unauthorized charges on my credit card and it was. It was from that soda machine where I used the credit card at a hospital. As crazy as it sounds.
Speaker 3:So now? So now what they've done is is so, if I mean, it's always illegal to use the skimmers to for fraud, we use the fraud statute. But now if? If somebody disposes of a skimmer that was installed by another person, so in other words, some people go and put the skimmers in and somebody else comes and grabs it, and so if you get rid of that, now that's a class B misdemeanor. But if you're disposing of a skimmer that's put on electronic terminal by a person that knows there's an investigation pending, that becomes a third degree felony.
Speaker 2:Oh, so it's almost like tampering with evidence.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so basically, and it's the same punishment- Okay.
Speaker 2:So it's like hey, I'm trying to hide this, they're looking into these things, I'm getting rid of it. You can now be charged with a felony.
Speaker 3:Right and then to that end, in terms of like fraudulent stuff, people were pulling copper out of people's homes and air conditioners so they had made any theft of copper felony. But now they've gone a little bit further. Is that unauthorized possession of certain copper or brass is now a state jail felony and it's a third degree if the copper or brass was obtained from critical infrastructure facility with a prior position or prior conviction or while possessing a firearm.
Speaker 3:OK so so what's happening is some people are taking this and it takes down jurisdictions like cities, infrastructure. Oh, I'm sure yeah, and so they're going to be cracking down on all this stuff.
Speaker 2:They should. I mean it's costly. I mean, you know, the whole idea behind the theft of copper is that you would get a lot of people that would go to these construction sites and they would rip the copper out of the walls. And so now you know, it's not just the value of the copper that's being lost, it's having to redo the walls, and so that there's a reason they turned that into a felony.
Speaker 3:Right, and so if they're ripping it out of, out of my air conditioner, they may get. They go sell that copper for like 50 bucks and I I have a $500 repair bill.
Speaker 2:Yeah, probably more than that with what my HVAC guy charges me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're probably right.
Speaker 2:Um, one of the things that we discussed in the last podcast is, uh, people using their social media, um, kind of taking pictures of themselves, you know, with guns or whatever. I know you and I have each had cases where people use their social media in order to facilitate the sale of guns or drugs. You know that is now codified in statute. If on a drug case you have somebody who's charged with manufacture and delivery of drugs, if it is shown that they used social media in order to facilitate that drug transaction, it makes the offense one level of punishment worse. So people that are posting, you know, their maybe THC vape pens on Instagram. If ordinarily the amount that you were selling would have been a third degree felony, if they show that you use Instagram for that, it is now a second degree felony. I thought that was interesting. There's a lot of changes in the law to address social media, to address things like AI, ai.
Speaker 3:I want to talk about after the break, absolutely.
Speaker 2:But these laws. I've always said that the laws are always a few years behind the technology right, because we get new technology and then people figure out how to use that technology for bad things, and then we have to draft laws in order to address the bad things that they're doing with the technology. So it's interesting that we're now seeing this law addressing people using social media. Right now it's only addressing them using social media to sell drugs. I could easily see a scenario where, down the road, they modify that to include the sale of firearms or whatever the case may be.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and there's something on the other side of the break. There's something about posting a vulnerable person on social media.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay. So that's a good time for our break. This is so you Got Arrested with Brick. Criminal Defense.
Speaker 4:The attorneys of Brick Criminal Defense have helped over 5,000 clients move on with their lives. When an arrest or accusation turns your life upside down, we have the knowledge, experience and integrity to get your life back on track. Traditional legal ethics, modern legal tactics the best defense possible to get you through the criminal justice system. Search Brick Criminal Defense to see our reviews and find out why so many of our clients have trusted us to fight for them. Brick Criminal Defense helping our clients move on with their lives.
Speaker 2:And we're back on. So you Got Arrested and, scott, you were talking about something before the break that you wanted to get back to.
Speaker 3:We had been into social media stuff. I wanted to make clear that they've codified posting covered information about an at risk person or immediate family member on a public Web site without getting consent is now a class B misdemeanor and it could be a class A if it results in any type of injury to that person or harm to that person. So what? What does that?
Speaker 2:what does that mean? The covered information about an at-risk person.
Speaker 3:So so I don't really know what it means, but but so we're looking at like. So if you're putting on social media that my, my cousin, just got put into the state hospital because of this or this, and you're putting it all out there and it's embarrassing, it's causing embarrassment to that person, obviously it's not your information to share, right, right. So you're posting information about someone who's having mental health issues or things like that, and now the prosecutor may be able to pick that up and charge you.
Speaker 2:Well, and there's also another change in the law that, as I was going through these new laws, that refers to doxing, which is interesting because you know so for our listeners, doxing is where you post information about somebody that maybe you met online or that is an online personality, or whatever the case may be. The idea is that you're posting their address, where they live, who their employer is. I know that that's a big issue on social media, where one person gets mad at another and now, all of a sudden, they're, you know, on X or on Reddit or Facebook and they're saying, hey, this is where this person lives, this is where this person works, which, you know, given the temperament of some people in society, may place that person in danger.
Speaker 3:And so this law was not in response to what I'm about to say, but what people are doing now. You have all the ICE agencies going into cities with masks, but they're able to use facial recognition to take the top half of their face and post who they are and where they live and they're doxing them.
Speaker 2:That's essentially what it is. Yeah, yeah, and so our legislature's trying to stay ahead again and address some of those issues.
Speaker 3:Make sure law enforcement can operate in secret against against our rights.
Speaker 2:Well, so there, while we're on this kick of technology, there are laws now on the books that address a I images.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so I don't know how I feel about it. I'm curious how you feel about it. So so now? So we, we've always had child porn statutes right, you can't possess child pornography. That's a horrible thing. But now, if you're having an AI has created an artificial childlike image that's doing sex acts, even though it's not a real person. Now it's become a felony.
Speaker 2:It's crime.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they can take that, and so it's not a real person that's the victim of child pornography. It's just an AI generated image of a child, and now that's going to be treated just like child porn.
Speaker 2:Well, and the interesting thing about that statute is the way the statute reads is that if the image depicts someone who appears to be younger than 18 years of age, that can be difficult. So I could see how that could be prosecuted, most certainly at the extremes of it where it's clearly depicted to be a child. But you know, I always worry again how prosecutors may use these statutes or how these statutes may be interpreted, because taking an artificial image and saying, ok, well, this is someone under the age of 18, that could. What worries me as a defense attorney is how that's going to be used.
Speaker 3:Right, right, and so now I know a lot of this stuff. There's not a question, absolutely, the image clearly looks like be used Right, right, and so now I know a lot of this stuff. There's not a question, absolutely, the image clearly looks like a child.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:I can't speak to how prosecutors would use their discretion, because every prosecutor is probably different. Right? You know you would hope that if it was a close call to the person that I could, that rational minds could disagree, that that person looks 18 to me, that you wouldn't. But it's up to them to decide and in theory it's up to the grand jury, right?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and the other part of that law that's interesting is built into the law. There is an affirmative defense. Now, an affirmative defense means that it's a defense that the defendant can put on, but he's got to put on some evidence for that in order to justify the defense. That if the defendant is within two years of age of the person depicted in the image, which gets a little convoluted because it's an artificial image and so how you know you have this person, you say, ok, well, this person is 19.
Speaker 2:But how do you show that? Well, the person in the image was depicted to be 17? It gets a little hazy and so many of so. A lot of times what happens is we get these new laws that are put into place, and then there's we have to see how they play out once they get into the courts, and then there are changes made to it. It gets refined, it gets adjusted. But sometimes it it gets refined, it gets adjusted.
Speaker 3:But sometimes it doesn't get refined. Sometimes everybody says this law don't make any sense, and then they just kind of abandon it and don't and nobody's really doing anything with it.
Speaker 2:Well, for the longest time. You know, to give you an example, evading with a vehicle here in the state of Texas is a third degree felony with a range of punishment of two to 10 years in prison. But there's also a law that says it's a state jail felony and the you know the legislature never changed that. And so, depending on which law you read, it's either a third degree felony or a state jail felony and there's things like that that come about that, hey, we know this is a problem, it just never gets addressed.
Speaker 3:So, for instance, I wasn't going to talk about this today, but so one of the new laws is now pretrial conditions for somebody who's out on bond have to be reported to the state through the Department of Public Safety.
Speaker 2:Okay, so that's what the law says. So you get out on bail, you have these conditions, you have to follow GPS.
Speaker 3:no contact with so-and-so.
Speaker 2:No drinking.
Speaker 3:So nothing in the provision says who's supposed to report it. Okay, so we don't know. So is pretrial services supposed to report it? Different counties, like some counties, their pretrial service is just the probation officer who does that too.
Speaker 2:Some counties don't have pretrial services.
Speaker 3:Right, and so is the DA supposed to report it. So they pass this law and of course it doesn't say how you're supposed to do it. Right, and we're all supposed to figure it out, right, I have no idea how it's going to be figured out, right.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, I mean, and a lot of times we see that these things are put into place with, you know, the best of intentions.
Speaker 3:But the reality of it is, you know, we don't know how we're supposed to act on this. So so like so, when they passed that law about theft of any copper is now a felony, when they presented that to us from the Texas Department of the TDC, it was the legislative body and training body for prosecutors. Shannon who was presented who's great is fantastic. Fantastic was saying so. Now, if you go to that, take a penny thing and pick up a penny, there's copper, it's a state jail felony. But then somebody, some wise guy, told me pennies don't have copper in them anymore yeah, so I I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 2:Well, we're not going to have pennies anymore, so that's not going to be we shouldn't have.
Speaker 3:I'm all for doing away with pennies. It's no reason.
Speaker 2:Yes, so there were other laws that you had wanted to discuss.
Speaker 3:Well, so getting back into we're still talking about the AI images and sex. It's all involved sex cases. So, in line with this whole idea that an AI image of a child doing sex acts is now, even though it's not a real person, is now a felony, they've also done it if you have a sex doll that looks like a child. Same basic thing. So if you have a sex doll that looks like a child, if you're possessing it, it's a state jail felony, and if you're possessing it with intent to promote, I don't know what you're intending to promote with that Making a video and if you're possessing it with intent to promote, I don't know what you're intending to promote with that Making a video?
Speaker 3:Making a video and selling it or I don't know, selling people time with your sex doll? I don't know how that would be a third degree felony, wow, so yeah, so now you're adding so it's not only just the artificial image, but if you have a sex doll, that looks, and how do you know what age a sex doll looks like? I don't. I've never seen a sex doll in person, so I don't know.
Speaker 2:And again, you know, I guess maybe the idea is these things. When you're looking at the extreme version of it, you could say, OK, I could see how that works. But as a defense attorney, what always worries me is, you know, when you have something that's not so clear, how is that used?
Speaker 3:So I've seen movies that have the sex dolls in them. There was a movie with Ryan Gosling that had Lars and the real girl fell around with fell in love with.
Speaker 2:You mentioned you you saw movies with a sex. I got a little worried there, but yes that's the one.
Speaker 3:But but those things don't even look like real people to me. I don't know. I don't know how we, I don't know how this law makes sense.
Speaker 2:Well, I, I'm sure there's some behavior that they're trying to address, and so uh, but like so many things, we'll have to see how it plays out. One of the changes in the law that I thought was interesting is, um, intoxication manslaughter. Okay, so, uh, do you want to explain what intoxication manslaughter is?
Speaker 3:Sure. So if I'm driving drunk and I cause an accident because I'm driving drunk and somebody dies, they don't have to prove I knowingly, intentionally caused that death. You were drunk and driving and an accident caused a death. That's intoxication, manslaughter punishable by two to 20 years.
Speaker 2:Okay, so there's a new change to the law. The law is that if more than one person was killed in that accident, it's now a first degree felony.
Speaker 3:Well, they could always stack, like under the old law, you could stack the two to 20 for the two different victims. But now it's just making it easier because only the judge can stack. A jury can't Right. So now it's going to be well, there's no excuse for driving drunk nowadays. Take an Uber, damn it. I mean, it makes no sense. I understand, coming from prosecution. Also in Medina County they don't have Uber out in some of these rural counties, but here in Bexar County do they have Uber in Wilson County and Nattis Coast.
Speaker 2:They do not Okay, yeah, so I guess it's just to me.
Speaker 3:It makes no sense to drive drunk when you can take an Uber.
Speaker 2:But the other time it becomes a first degree felony is if, at the conclusion of the trial during punishment, they're able to show that you've previously been convicted of just a DWI. Yeah, so now you know it. Let's take an intoxication manslaughter and it's one person and it would ordinarily be two to 20. If they're able to show that, hey, this person has a prior DWI conviction. Now that becomes a first degree felony.
Speaker 3:And so we've been sometimes critical of these new laws. But that's a law a little bit of a squeeze.
Speaker 3:You had a DWI probation where you could have killed somebody and you went to classes which told you the victim impact panel that you have to take when you're on DWI probation has people who've lost loved ones or killed somebody in DWI accident telling how that's affected their lives. So you've heard all this. You've been told by, like if I was your attorney, I said there's no excuse to drive by drunk. Take an Uber, like I just said. And now you've done it again and now you've killed somebody, Right, and now you've done it again.
Speaker 2:And now you've killed somebody, right, right, so that's a law I like, yeah, and so in that scenario it becomes 5 to 99, which you know you're again. You're taking somebody who keeps engaging in the same reckless, dangerous behavior and you're saying, ok, well, now there's going to be a more severe punishment attached, right.
Speaker 3:It makes sense. I do have to get back to sex, because apparently that's my role in this podcast.
Speaker 2:OK, well, you used to do crimes against children and sex offenses.
Speaker 3:I spent a lot of time handling sex crimes as a prosecutor, but there's a. There's a. So now, continuous promotion of prostitution is now a first degree felony.
Speaker 2:OK, so what is that?
Speaker 3:So, so that that is so. When they said, big Pimpin' ain, big, big pimping ain't easy, now it's really not easy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, now it gets you in a lot of trouble.
Speaker 3:Yeah and so. So if if you are doing it over a period of time and you've you got different people and different offenses, they're not going to just have it. The old days were like promoting prostitution or your things like that, they're going to just have the old days where, like promoting prostitution or things like that, they're going to hit you with this first degree now. Now it's new, so I don't know. We had a time we had switched in Bexar County where we were stopping and putting the emphasis on the, on the prostitutes themselves, and trying to go after the johns Right, right, but that's kind of slowed down a little bit. I haven't seen many of those cases come across our desk.
Speaker 3:Solicitation of prostitution yeah, so now it looks like they moved from going after the prostitutes to going after the Johns, to going after the pimps. Right, right, yeah. And now, and they're going after them hard, five to 99. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And and, and you know that that would make sense because you know some of these guys, I guess, would be the ones that are bringing these women in and trafficking them and then making them go out there, oftentimes against their will.
Speaker 3:And so you're saying, hey, you're going to get a severe punishment if we find out. So it looks like by trial and error. Maybe we're trying how to identify who's the culprit in causing this problem Right, and how to solve the problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Culprit in causing this problem. Right, and how to solve the problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly.
Speaker 3:So any other changes in the law that you felt needed to be addressed? Nothing that I think we can fit into this timeframe. This is our. You know we're going to get back to talking about juvenile law next week and maybe family violence cases particularly.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:But as far as the legislative update, this is all we got for you. There's other stuff out there, but I think we hit all the high points.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is the stuff that jumped out to us, so we appreciate you listening. This is so you Got Arrested with Brick. Criminal Defense.
Speaker 1:For more legal insights and real talk from the front lines of the Texas justice system. Follow us and subscribe, and remember Brick Criminal Defense has your back. For more information, visit us at brckdefensecom.