CAMPAIGN NEWS

The day after the primary, I was approached by the campaigns of both Chris Johnson and Thomas Just, seeking my endorsement for the run-off. I won't be making an endorsement in this race. Texas is somewhat unique in that it selects its trial court judges by direct election and, at the same time, has very little in the way of regulations concerning how trial lawyers can affect the outcome of those elections. As you might imagine, this is a situation ripe for abuse. In all of

Somebody once asked me what was the hardest case I ever had to do. Now, I've been a criminal trial lawyer for over 36 years. I've been involved in thousands of criminal cases, both as a prosecutor and a defense lawyer. I've tried over a 150 jury trials. And, you might imagine, I've had to see, hear and deal with some pretty awful stuff. But one case leapt to mind. It began on a Saturday afternoon. My client took his kids to some event. It's been a few years now, so I c

There's been a lot of discussion about diversion programs in the local criminal justice races during this campaign. It seems like every candidate for judge or prosecutor has some new diversion program they would like to push. It's time, though, that we quit competing to invent new diversion programs and ask the next question: What the should the courts be doing once someone has completed a diversion program? So, before we go any further, what is a diversion program? A div

While I have been block-walking over the past couple of months, there are three questions I get over and over: What's a county court-at-law? (It's mainly a misdemeanor criminal court -- e.g., DWI, Assault, Theft...) Are you the judge now? (No, not yet.) Hey, I went to high school with a _______________ Friesenhahn. Are you related to them? Why yes, yes I am. Every Friesenhahn in Texas is a descendant of one family of brave, fearless, resourceful, resilient, determined, an

I was block-walking this past Saturday and had a conversation with a woman who asked me: “What can we do about ICE?”  She was not the first person to ask me this question.  Now, as someone who is running for judge of a misdemeanor criminal court, a court that normally deals with cases such as Driving While Intoxicated, Assault, Theft, and the like, this isn’t a question that I ever expected to be asked, certainly not on multiple occasions.   But, then again, when I filed to r

Judges are like airline pilots. They need to know in which direction they're heading, and they need to know how to fly the plane. Hi. I'm W. David Friesenhahn, I'm a Democrat, and I'm running for Judge of Hays County Court-at-Law No. 2. Our campaign's slogan is "Let's Get Real -- Real Democrat, Real Experience, Real Change." But before I get to all that, I'd like you to imagine something with me. Imagine that you are taking a trip on a plane. You take your seat and, then

I will be at the No Kings Rallies in Kyle and San Marcos today. With the rule of law now under attack in our country literally every day, it's not enough for lawyers to simply be in the courtroom. We need to be in the streets protesting, running for office, engaging with our neighbors, speaking out. Hope to see you there.

We have been creating this website, as well as other social media for our campaign. We of course, attempted to set up a Facebook page. When we did so, however, we received a message that told us that our attempt to do so had been blocked because we had somehow violated Facebook's community standards. Now, at this point, we had not yet actually created any posts or uploaded any images, much less published the page to the world. No further explanation for the blocking was gi

This is our first blog post.