SAN ANTONIO – Embattled San Antonio Councilman Clayton Perry appears to be trying to get into a specialty court for military veterans, which could help him keep drunk driving and hit-and-run charges off his public record.
Online Bexar County court records show both the District 10 councilman’s cases stemming from a Nov. 6 crash were transferred this month to Bexar County Court at Law 6, which is home to the Bexar County Veterans Treatment Court.
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The VTC is a specialty court that serves veterans who suffer from PTSD, traumatic brain injuries, mental illness, or addiction. In exchange for completing the court’s treatment program, veterans get leniency for misdemeanor cases - either with probation, or a dismissal with no criminal conviction on their record.
The Bexar County District Attorney’s Office determines who is allowed into each of those two tracks for the VTC.
Veterans who aren’t convicted or put on deferred adjudication are eligible to have their records expunged after completing the pretrial track.
“Generally, before somebody enters the program voluntarily, they’re going to be given an offer that will avoid any type of conviction on their record,” Joel Hoelscher, a criminal defense and DWI attorney who is not affiliated with Perry’s cases, told KSAT.
Police have accused Perry of having 14 drinks at a bar before crashing his Jeep Wrangler head-on into an Honda Civic, then fleeing the scene. His two resulting charges, DWI and failure to stop and give information, are both class B misdemeanors, punishable by up to 180 days in jail, a fine of up to $2,000, or both.
During Perry’s initial appearance in a different court on Jan. 24, his attorney told the judge he and the prosecutor had conferred on the case that morning but were “still conferring on it and trying to come up with some resolution.”
Orders referring Perry to the VTC appear in the online court records on Jan. 27, and his cases were transferred on Feb. 2.
However, it is not clear if Perry has actually been accepted to take part in the VTC.
A pretrial conference for both cases is scheduled for March 9.
A spokeswoman for the DA’s office told KSAT on Wednesday that it could not comment on pending cases. Judge Erica Dominguez , who presides over Bexar County Court at Law 6 and the VTC, would not comment on Perry’s case or why he was transferred to her court.
Perry’s attorney, David Christian, also declined to comment.
Not every veteran is eligible for the specialty court.
“It has to be a service-related disability linked to the drinking or substance abuse. It cannot be somebody going out and having a good time,” Hoelscher said. “It can’t be somebody celebrating an anniversary. There has to be a connection between the actual veteran’s service and their conduct that got them arrested.”
Perry retired from the military in 2000, and Hoelscher thinks it would be a “hard sell” to make the link between his alleged driving and his military service more than two decades ago.
But even if the councilman isn’t allowed into the VTC, Hoelscher said Perry would still be part of Judge Dominguez’s docket, rather than in Bexar County Court at Law 12, where his cases were first assigned.
Hoelscher said that could be a benefit, too, as Judge Yolanda Huff in Bexar County Court at Law 12 was quoted in a San Antonio Express News article talking about the need to punish DWI offenders more harshly.
“I arrived here, and this was the culture,” the Express News quoted Huff as saying in a Nov. 16, 2022 article. “It’s this culture that we shouldn’t be too mean looking at a DWI. They’re not taken seriously. And that’s just what I see over and over. I just cannot fathom why we are not doing more — as a judiciary, why we aren’t doing more?”
DA Joe Gonzales later credited the series of articles in which Huff was quoted with prompting a change to how his office prosecutes DWI cases.
“As a DWI attorney, his attorneys have done a great job,” Hoelscher said. “They’ve moved him from a court that would be tough into a court that would be easier, regardless of what happens with the VTC.”