Fine-Only Crimes in Texas
Thousands of clients guided to ticket dismissals in over 100 municipal and justice courts across South Texas.
Criminal defense lawyers in Texas seem to place little to no importance on Class C misdemeanors. These are crimes with punishment set as “fine only.” The topic is all but ignored on their websites. Maybe they don’t think anyone is looking for a lawyer on those cases. Maybe they don’t think it’s worthy of their time to say more.
Few go beyond saying it is the most minor category of crime and has a maximum punishment of $500 and no jail.
That description is partly right, but it is far from complete and true. For one, that definition fits the Penal Code, but not all other criminal laws. More importantly, it’s NOT true in that you CAN go to jail, and $500 is NOT the maximum fine without jail.
You deserve to know much more because it can and probably will affect your own life.
You are far more likely to face a fine-only criminal charge than one which can put you in prison. Worse, you are likely to casually accept a conviction, which is almost always a mistake. It’s almost as if being convicted and fined doesn’t matter to most lawyers and most people facing Class C misdemeanors. It does. It matters.
Fine-only misdemeanors are extraordinarily common in Texas. Nearly 7 million such cases are filed per year in Texas. The vast majority of these are traffic tickets.
Not only has the state defined hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fine-only misdemeanors, cities have the authority to add countless more in local ordinances. We have over 1,200 towns and cities in Texas, and each one has loads of Class C misdemeanors. Building codes, how high your grass can be, how long your car with a flat can be parked on the street, and whatever other thing the city officials want to criminalize can become a crime. Yet another way you can commit a Class C misdemeanor is attempting, but failing, to commit a Class B misdemeanor.
While making a mistake like that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, it can cost you far more than you think. You may even wind up in jail, despite the maximum punishment being a fine.
Beyond a fine, some people lose their jobs, others lose opportunities, millions pay thousands more outside of court, and hundreds of thousands even may lose a valuable license like a driver license. A few can even lose professional licenses. Gun rights may be affected, too.
By the time you finish this, you should know better than to simply pay a fine on a “fine-only” misdemeanor.
Please note “fine-only” and “Class C” will be used interchangeably in this piece, but they aren’t exactly the same things.
Just because you can’t be sentenced to jail, doesn’t mean you won’t go to jail. You may even go to jail more than once.
Defense attorneys sometimes may lose sight of this because they deal with cases involving jail sentences or prison sentences, but jail doors are as locked for Class C misdemeanors as they are for other crimes.
Fine-only refers only to the maximum sentence which can be imposed upon a defendant after being convicted. It’s true jail cannot be a part of the judge’s original sentence against you. That doesn’t mean you won’t see the inside of a jail for a Class C misdemeanor.
Most fine-only offenses are arrestable offenses. You can be placed into cuffs without a warrant, put in a patrol car, hauled off to jail, be forced to give your fingerprints and take a mug shot, subjecting you to public humiliation, as well as being required to post bail. If you resist arrest, police can use whatever force is required to subdue you.
The option to arrest or not arrest is the choice of the law enforcement agent. Most agencies have policies in place to determine whether arrests happen. The norm is to not arrest for most Class C misdemeanors.
Speeding has a narrow exception to arrest, that is, IF you are a Texas licensee and agree to sign the ticket. Otherwise, you can be arrested for speeding, too!
Some Class C charges almost always result in arrest. One such charge is public intoxication. As soon as a cop encounters a person believed to be in violation, the cuffs go on, and the unpleasant ride begins.
Warrants for failure to appear for court can put you in jail, too. Well over a million warrants are issued for these cases per year. When your name is called, it’s important to be counted present. Otherwise, you may wind up with a warrant for your arrest, which is an order from the judge ordering any peace officer to arrest you.
It doesn’t matter that you lost the ticket. It doesn’t matter that you missed because you don’t live near the court. It doesn’t matter that you were traveling when you got the ticket and aren’t sure where you were stopped. It doesn’t matter that you just forgot. It doesn’t matter that your address on your driver license isn’t up to date, so you didn’t get the reminder letter. What matters is the judge can issue a warrant for failing to show up for court.
If you made it to court, then you were ordered to pay, failure to pay can result in going to jail yet again. A “capias pro fine” issued by the judge orders a police officer to arrest you, too. More than half a million such warrants are issued in Texas annually.
For far too many people, this is a real struggle, and our jails routinely house them. Some are too poor to pay anything, some are faced with the prospect of choosing between paying what the court ordered and a household necessity. This is not speculation. It’s documented fact.
The claim of a Class C misdemeanor having a maximum fine of $500 is only partly true, IF you limit your search to the Texas Penal Code. That’s as far as most people look. However, the Penal Code is only one of many codes. (Codes are simply groupings of related laws.) Many codes contain crimes which are never found in the Penal Code.
Fines from other codes can vary dramatically. For instance, the fine for a first-time offense of operating an overweight commercial vehicle can be as much as $10,000 for a FIRST-TIME OFFENSE. City ordinances in 1,000+ Texas municipalities can have fines of up to $4,000 per offense.
The Transportation Code covers most traffic-related charges. The Health and Safety Code covers drug charges. Special codes like Parks and Wildlife criminally prohibit things like fishing or hunting without a license, keeping undersized or oversized fish, and speeding on park roads. Alcoholic Beverage Code violations get thousands of young people in legal trouble during Spring Break every year. Many other codes have charges you probably never heard of or thought of because you just don’t have anything to do with them.
For many Class C misdemeanors, you can commit a crime, even when you don’t mean to do it. You may have committed a crime and not even been aware of it. In fact, you probably have. That’s right. You can be a criminal and NOT KNOW IT. That’s because of strict liability.
Most traditional crimes require intent or knowledge, but strict liability requires no proof of such things. The prosecutor’s job is to prove simply that the act was committed. Whether the criminal was conscious of the act is irrelevant.
Take speeding, for example. If you are driving faster than is prudent, you are a criminal, even if you didn’t know what your speed was. You’re still guilty, even if you meant to be going under the speed limit. Speeding is one of the many Class C misdemeanors classified as a strict liability offense.
Municipal Courts and Justice Courts are where Class C misdemeanors are filed. Municipal Courts are courts for a particular city or town. Justice Courts are a part of county government and are usually known as Justices of the Peace, or JP courts.
A distinctive feature of all but a few fine-only courts is the fact they are not “courts of record.” That means court proceedings like hearings and testimony given under oath at trial are not recorded or reported by a court reporter. As a result, appeal options can be different in certain courts.
Ironically, you could have TWO jury trials for a Class C misdemeanor, if you lose a jury trial in a court which is not of record, then appeal.
You may be under the impression a judge who could decide your fate in a Class C misdemeanor must be a lawyer, but you’d be wrong. In fact, most judges for Class C misdemeanors in Texas are not lawyers. There is no specific educational requirement at all to take office.
Justices of the Peace have only a few minimum requirements because they are elected positions: be a U.S. citizen of at least 18 years of age, a registered voter in a particular county precinct, a resident of Texas for at least 12 consecutive months and in their precinct for at least 6 consecutive months, as well as having no felony conviction, nor being declared mentally incapacitated.
Municipal court judges may be required by local city law to be lawyers, but the state does not require it unless the municipal court is a court of record, and those attorneys must have been lawyers in good standing at least two years.
New judges in both kinds of courts tend to get educated relatively quickly because they are required to complete a minimum number of hours in training courses. Those courses are provided by specialized training centers: Texas Municipal Court Education Center and Texas Justice Court Training Center.
Regardless of whether your judge is a lawyer, you will have an opponent who is a lawyer. The state clearly cannot speak for itself, so a city attorney, county attorney, or district attorney’s office will represent the state in each and every contested case.
You have a right to the attorney of your choice, but the government won’t pay for it. Legal aid groups are highly unlikely to spend their limited budgets on Class C criminal defense, as well. That typically means you must provide your own attorney at your own expense.
In all justice courts and in municipal courts which are not courts of record, appeal is by “trial de novo,” which essentially means you get a brand new trial at the county court level.
In municipal courts of record, traditional appeals apply, so defendants are required to demonstrate the lower court violated their rights. This is a much more complicated and expensive process. Most people would find it ironic that a successful appeal usually means you get a new trial in the very court where your rights were violated. Yes, it’s set up that way in criminal law.
You can’t get “deferred adjudication” “probation” for a fine-only violation in Texas. You may, however, get a “deferred disposition.”
“Probation” is reserved for more serious violations and is governed by a lengthy portion of the Code of Criminal Procedure, Article 42A. Probation is formally called community supervision and generally is a substitute for executing a jail term. One form of probation is deferred adjudication, which defers a finding of guilty and a formal sentence. It even has the potential to result in dismissal of a criminal case. Probation officers supervise probationers for and report to the courts.
Deferred disposition, by contrast, has no supervision by a probation officer. It has an important similarity to deferred adjudication: the possibility of dismissal of the charge upon successful completion of the conditions set by the court. Usually, that means pay some money, stay out of trouble like getting another traffic ticket, and perhaps take a class and provide proof of completing the class.
Texas licensees have an option in many traffic cases for what’s called the “mandatory” driving safety course option. If they qualify and follow the required procedures exactly, they can demand deferred disposition. Otherwise, a judge has discretion as to whether to grant deferred disposition in a fine-only charge.
Choosing guilty or no contest (nolo contendere) can mean a world of difference in certain contexts.
A plea of guilty to a Class C misdemeanor establishes the elements of that crime as proven beyond a reasonable doubt. That level of proof is higher than all other legal levels of proof in trial courts. Courts also hate having to spend time on matters already decided by another court. The consequence is the guilty plea can be admitted in a civil case like a car wreck lawsuit to prove the person did the things admitted.
Pleading no contest (nolo contendere) avoids the problem the guilty plea presents in a civil case. However, no contest is treated the same by the court in the criminal case as if it were a guilty plea.
Most general criminal law concepts apply to fine-only crimes, but there are some limitations. Those limitations and differences are typically addressed in Article 45A of the Code of Criminal Procedure. How appearances are made, how charges are formally filed, and how appeals are conducted are some of the fine-only misdemeanor nuances addressed by Article 45A.
In many situations, what some call petty can have life-altering, life-long negative impacts.
Entire careers can be ruined. Licenses could potentially be lost, most commonly driver licenses.
Thinking it doesn’t matter much is probably why most people just pay and take a conviction. It’s an unwise, shortsighted approach.
One of the absolute worst convictions for a fine-only misdemeanor is any form of theft because it’s a crime involving moral turpitude.
Fair or not, some crimes are considered especially wicked and vile, so fundamentally contrary to acceptable social standards that they have a special category. These are called crimes involving moral turpitude. They typically involve dishonesty, deceit, or depravity.
The legal effect of such terms is particularly harsh, both within legal contexts and society at large.
Convictions can be used in court to undermine testimony, the theory being someone who committed such a crime is not trustworthy and should not be believed.
Collateral consequences include losing professional licenses, due to the perceived risk of the person being unworthy of a trusted position. Employers regularly reject applicants with such convictions, even mere allegations. Military branches do not want a “thief in the barracks.”
Immigration officials will consider theft within the “good moral character” evaluation, at a minimum. It could derail efforts for citizenship. (Consult with an immigration lawyer as soon as you can after you are aware of having a criminal charge of any kind, EVEN TRAFFIC TICKETS, but especially this kind.)
Avoiding a conviction for a crime involving moral turpitude, especially theft, is extraordinarily important. Still, many simply pay the fine without even going to court, and they have no idea what they have done to themselves. Even if you go to court, the judge has no obligation to tell you how harmful a conviction will be, that it can make it a permanent stain on your life.
Some Class C crimes can be used to enhance a fine-only charge into a more serious level of criminal charge.
If theft weren’t already bad enough as a Class C charge, it can be elevated to more serious misdemeanors, even to a felony! All it takes is two prior convictions of any level of theft, even Class C. Texas law authorizes the state to put a person with prior convictions in prison for years for stealing something as tiny as a breath mint.
A commercial driver with a CDL can be ordered to pay a fine of up to $20,000 for a charge of driving an overweight vehicle, if there was a prior conviction for the same offense.
Other examples of fine-only violations becoming Class B misdemeanors (up to 180 days in jail and/or up to a $2,000 fine) are Driving While License Invalid, Public Intoxication, and Theft (yes, theft again).
Take Class C misdemeanors seriously. The state of Texas will, and it will never let you forget a conviction, no matter how minor.
Any time you face a criminal charge, no matter how minor you think it is, get help. Attorney Phillip W. Goff has helped thousands of people like you. Let him help you, too. Contact his office today.
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