Does this require dismissal of a DWI 2nd case? Proposed Motion is worded, "X, a peace officer with the City of "A," presented a complaint to the County Attorney's Office which occurred outside of his jurisdiction," but I'm questioning whether it is really necessary to dismiss.

Unfortunately, from the offense report and the file, I cannot see where officer 'X' comes into the picture as he is a city officer several towns away from the rural arrest. The report, arrest, and intoxilizer were all performed by DPS. It looks like there must have been a paperwork snafu somewhere along the way with a city officer signing off on the wrong Complaint and our Information was filed with his name as complainant.

The (possible) good news is that there is also a Complaint signed by the arresting officer. Can the Information be amended without having to dismiss and refile?

If your arresting officer is a sheriff's deputy, constable, or city officer, he or she can arrest a person for any offense committed in the officer's presence or view except for traffic offenses (CCP art 14.03(g)). So the arrest for the DWI would be fine except that he had no authority to stop the defendant if the reason for the initial stop was a simple traffic violation. There have been a couple of cases where the court found the stop was ok because the officer's specifically stopped the driver because he suspected DWI and the evidence was strong enough the court agreed.

Janette

Maybe amendingwould have been the better question - the arrest, report, and (one of the) complaint(s) are all good. The problem is we have TWO complaints in the file: one by the proper officer as required by CCrP 21.21(3), and another that must have fallen out of the sky signed by an officer unrelated to the case or the jurisdiction. Unfortunately, our information was filed based on this one. Art.21.25 allows a substitute if the original was lost - as long as it is the same as the original, but I don't think we ever did a correct information, even though we have a properly executed complaint to base one on. Just trying to avoid dismissing and refiling, but can't find anything on amending the name of the complainant - only when you can amend the name of the accused.

An information may be amended as to form or substance, per the above statute. See Riney v. State, 28 S.W.3d 561 (Tex. Crim. App. 2000)