Exception to the 'No Deferred Adjudication for DWI' Rule

Decatur Texas defense attorney Barry Green left a comment on a post sometime back, and I meant to publish it, as soon as I got around to correcting my error. Done – although, it took a reminder from his blog for me to finally get around to doing it.

In his comment he politely points out that my knee-jerk reaction to a reader’s question (“Should he plead not guilty or try for deferred adjudication?”) was “a bit unclear” because she was talking about a Felony DWI with Child Passenger charge, not a plain old ordinary first time DWI. Turns out Barry was being kind in his comment.

Love your blog but I think something was a bit unclear here. Unless I'm wrong, CCP 42.12 Sec.5 still has the loophole to allow for deferred adjudication for the offense of DWI w/ Child. (Certainly, that option will be legislatively abolished one of these days.) But, for now, I can still get that offer on occasion up here in North Texas.

Since the question dealt specifically with State Jail Felony charge of DWI with Child Passenger, my answer was flat wrong. The specific question in the post was:

Should he plead not guilty or try for deferred adjudication? full story