New Braunfels Law Blog

Francisco Carrillo, Jr., was wrongfully convicted of a fatal drive-by shooting. He spent 20 years in prison before his conviction was overturned in 2011. Since then, two men have confessed to the crime.

Carrillo's case arises as an illustration in an editorial by the Los Angeles Times about the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. The Times says that wrongful convictions plague California, but the problem is nationwide. The National Registry of Exonerations has recorded 2,215 exonerations since 1989 and it found that some 29 percent of them involve a mistaken witness identification.

Whether you suffered a traumatic brain injury in a motor vehicle accident, a fall or some other catastrophe, you may have felt lucky that the damage wasn't worse. Even so, you may have noticed that your friends and family look at you differently. They may even mention that you don't seem like yourself.

That makes sense to you, and probably to them, in the immediate aftermath of your ordeal. After all, it was a traumatic experience, and readjusting to life may be a challenge because of it. However, what do you do if it's been months since the accident and you still don't feel, or seem, like yourself anymore? Could the accident have caused behavioral changes in you that your doctor failed to warn you about when you saw him or her last?

When you send in your genetic material to have an ancestry DNA test done, is that material private? Major commercial providers of these tests say they won't hand the data over to law enforcement without a court order. That may not mean much, as we recently learned in the "Golden State Killer" case.

Investigators in Sacramento, California, recently announced they have arrested a suspect in the decades-old serial murder case. The Golden State Killer, also known as the "East Area Rapist," is thought to have committed at least 13 murders, at least 50 rapes, and perhaps 100 robberies throughout California between 1976 and 1986. A former police officer, now 72, has been tied to the crime in part by matching crime scene DNA to a distant relative's profile on a site called GEDMatch.

When anyone learns that someone they care about has suffered a brain injury, they may immediately think the worst. As most people know, any damage to the brain could easily result in serious changes to a person's personality and his or her abilities. Unfortunately, many scenarios could lead to an individual suffering this type of serious injury.

First, you may want to remember that the manner in which a brain injury occurs determines the category it falls into. In general terms, when a lack of oxygen causes damage to the brain, those injuries fall into the category of an acquired brain injury. When the head suffers trauma that leads to brain damage, those injuries fall into the category of traumatic brain injuries. In particular, car accidents can easily lead to various forms of TBI.