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by srothstein
Mon Feb 11, 2008 10:27 pm
Forum: 2007 Texas Legislative Session
Topic: traveling
Replies: 9
Views: 8423

Re: traveling

Liko81,

No, there is no relationship between traveling and the law allowing a weapon in the car. When they rewrote the law this year, they included the part about being in a car as necessary elements of the offense. Legally, this means that these are factors that must be proven as part of the charge, i.e., that you were not in a car, or that if you were in a car you had the weapon visible, or were committing another crime, etc.

This is different from the previous law's presumption for traveling. In that case, a specific legal statement of how the law will view certain facts. In that law, if you were in a car, you were presumed to be traveling, which is an exception to the law.

And, as Jim pointed out, while we no longer have the presumption written into the law, we do still have the exception for traveling. This could apply to you if you were walking, riding a horse, a gang member, carrying in your car in plain view, or any other factors which would make you otherwise guilty under the current law. And, according to the pre-eminent Court of Criminal Appeals case on traveling (from around 1910 IIRC), traveling is a fact to be determined by the jury during the trial.

Thus, if you have a jury that has several basketball coaches on it, you might be able to convince them that you were traveling if you moved both feet without dribbling. But, other than that, you take a chance on whether or not you can convince the jury you are traveling. Some have taken very simple rules for traveling, some have taken fairly unusual cases as not traveling. and there is no real pattern.

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