Our local law enforcement agencies' evidence officers have asked me to come up with some guidelines on how long they've got to retain physical evidence. Now I'm trying to think of every possible scenario that we may need it and how long beyond a Defendant's plea or trial. Say someone takes a deferred, a motion is filed to adjudicate him & besides fighting the adjudication, he wants to relitigate the offense that put him on deferred in the first place? What about writ writers?

The specific provisions of CCP Art. 18.18, et seq (gambling paraphernalia, explosive weapons, etc.) don't apply in most of these cases. Surely a greater mind than mine has thought of all the various situations described above (and more) and come up with a nice, tidy evidence retention schedule that they wouldn't mind sharing with me. Right?

You need to consider Article 38.43, dealing with retention of biological evidence. You should also look at the retention schedules published by the Texas State Library for police agencies and see if they refer to evidence. I know there are some long retention times for police records.

I'd also contact some of the big departments and see if they already have retention schedules that you could copy.

Murphy's law says that, whatever they decide to do, they will dispose of something they later need, keep stuff no one ever wants, and it will cost 5 times as much as they can afford . . .