Not sure how you handle this in your jurisdiction, but we offer kids deferred prosecution as opposed to deferred adjudication where the child actually pleads true. It seems that is the only deferred plea I can find statutory authority for (Other than Tex. Fam. Code 54.032 - which I don't believe applies to felonies as well as A & B misdemeanors, but please correct me if i'm wrong).

I now have a situation where a judge denied a Deferred Prosecution request by a juvenile-respondent and now the juvenile is asking the judge to place him on deferred adjudication. Seems like he's trying to get two bites at the apple to me.

QUESTION - Does anyone know of any statutory authority for Def. Adj. in juvenile cases? Or does anyone know of a case on point? Thanks for your time.

I've never seen a county or read a case about any county that does a "real" deferred adjudication. The only juvi deferred that I've seen is the one talked about in the Family Code.

I think you are right, thats two bites at the apple, really three on a misdemeanor case. Regular deferred, this "new" deferred that your respondent is asking for and then mandatory probation after that, because w/o priors you couldn't send him away on the misdemeanor.

But, if the Judge denied the deferred pros. (and thats a concept I'd have a question about too) what are the chances he'd do a deferred adjudication ?

Juveniles request this often in our county, too, but mostly because they do not understand the difference between deferred prosecution and deferred adjudication. The judge here politely informed the juvenile's attorney that he could not order a deferred prosecution....so the juvenile insists his case should be dismissed because his future chances at jobs/schools will be ruined with a state jail felony to answer for. I think this is a result of criminal attorneys attempting to apply what they know from adult criminal plea bargaining to juveniles.

After having this struggle with a few juvenile cases, the usual defense strategy is to say that sealing records don't really protect the juveniles, so deferred prosecution is the last hope for the juvenile to have a chance at college.

Anyhow, I looked also and could not find anything about deferred adjudication...but it does seem redundant when there is def pros and sealing of records.