Improper contact with victim is a Class A misdemeanor under Texas Penal Code § 38.111 — and a third-degree felony when the contact comes after a felony conviction. It criminalizes letters, phone calls, and third-party messages sent from jail, prison, or juvenile detention to the victim of a listed sex offense or the victim’s family. Below: the controlling statute text, the full punishment range, common defense theories, and what to do if you have been charged in Collin, Dallas, Denton, or Tarrant County.
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Published 2026-07-05 · Reviewed by Reggie London and Njeri London, Co-Founding Partners · Last reviewed: 2026-07-05
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Controlling statute:Texas Penal Code § 38.111 Classification: Class A misdemeanor; third-degree felony if the actor is confined after a felony conviction for a listed offense Punishment range: Class A misdemeanor (up to 1 year in county jail + fine up to $4,000); third-degree felony (2–10 years in TDCJ + fine up to $10,000) when confinement follows a felony conviction for an offense listed in Art. 62.001(5), Code of Criminal Procedure
What Does Penal Code § 38.111 Prohibit?
Texas Penal Code § 38.111 — Improper Contact with Victim — targets one narrow but heavily policed situation: a person “confined in a correctional facility after being charged with or convicted of an offense listed in Article 62.001(5), Code of Criminal Procedure” who “contacts by letter, telephone, or any other means, either directly or through a third party, a victim of the offense or a member of the victim’s family.” The cross-reference to Article 62.001(5) is what gives the statute its shape — that provision is the sex-offender-registration list, so § 38.111 applies to people held on charges such as indecency with a child, sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault, possession of child pornography, and the other registrable offenses discussed below.
Contact is criminal only when the paperwork is missing. The statute permits contact if, before it happens, the director of the correctional facility has both received written and dated consent from the right person and provided the confined person a copy of that consent. Who may give the consent depends on the victim’s age at the time of the underlying offense: a victim who was 17 or older consents personally; for a victim younger than 17, consent may come from a parent, a legal guardian, the victim once he or she turns 17, or a family member who is at least 17. Subsection (b) then closes an obvious loophole — the confined person can never supply the consent — which matters most in intra-family cases, where the defendant is often the victim’s own parent or relative and would otherwise arguably qualify as “a member of the victim’s family.”
The Legislature added § 38.111 in 2001 and has amended it three times, most recently in 2019. The 2019 amendment (House Bill 1343, effective September 1, 2019) is the one that changed the statute’s reach: as originally enacted the offense protected only victims who were younger than 17 when the crime occurred, while the current text protects victims of any age, with the consent procedure adjusted to match. One drafting artifact survived that rewrite — subsection (b) still cross-references “Subsection (a)(2)(A),” a provision that no longer exists in the restructured statute — the kind of detail a defense lawyer notes when the State’s theory depends on who supplied or could have supplied consent.
“Correctional facility” is defined broadly. Section 38.111(e) picks up every place described by Penal Code § 1.07(a)(14) — municipal and county jails, TDCJ prison units, and facilities operated under contract with the State — plus “secure correctional facilities” and “secure detention facilities” as defined by Family Code § 51.02. A 16-year-old held in juvenile detention on an aggravated-sexual-assault petition is covered by § 38.111 just as fully as a TDCJ inmate serving a sentence.
One feature separates § 38.111 from almost every other no-contact rule in Texas practice: it is self-executing. No judge signs an order, no hearing is held, and no warning is required. The prohibition attaches by operation of law the moment a person is booked into a facility on a listed charge — which is exactly why defendants who believed they were “just making a phone call” end up indicted for a second offense they never knew existed.
Who Can Be Charged with Improper Contact with a Victim?
The State has to place the defendant inside three boxes at once: (1) confined in a correctional facility, (2) confined after being charged with or convicted of an Article 62.001(5) offense, and (3) in contact with a victim of that offense or a member of that victim’s family. Miss any box and the statute does not apply — though other consequences, covered below, may still follow.
The Article 62.001(5) list — “reportable convictions or adjudications” — includes continuous sexual abuse of a young child, indecency with a child (§ 21.11), sexual assault (§ 22.011), aggravated sexual assault (§ 22.021), sexual performance by a child, possession or promotion of child pornography (§ 43.26), prohibited sexual conduct, compelling prostitution, sex-trafficking offenses, online solicitation of a minor, a second indecent-exposure conviction, and certain kidnapping, unlawful-restraint, and burglary offenses committed with sexual intent or against minors. If the charge that put the person in custody is not on that list — an ordinary assault, a DWI, a theft — § 38.111 simply does not reach the contact.
Both pretrial detainees and convicted inmates are covered, but their exposure differs. A person confined after being charged — presumed innocent, awaiting trial in a county jail — commits the Class A misdemeanor version. So does a person confined after a misdemeanor conviction for a listed offense, such as a second indecent-exposure conviction. The third-degree-felony version is reserved for a person confined after a felony conviction for a listed offense — typically a TDCJ inmate serving a sentence for sexual assault or indecency with a child.
On the receiving end, the statute protects “a victim of the offense” — the victim of the specific offense for which the person is confined, not any complainant in any case — “or a member of the victim’s family.” The statute does not define “member of the victim’s family,” which leaves genuine room to litigate scope at the margins: step-relatives, former in-laws, a parent’s live-in partner, or household members who are not blood relatives. Whether a given recipient falls inside the protected circle is a fact question the defense can contest.
Two situations fall outside the statute entirely. Contact made after release — on bond, on parole, or after discharge — is not § 38.111, because the actor must be confined when the contact occurs; protective orders and bond conditions govern that conduct instead. And contact with people outside the victim’s family — mutual friends, the victim’s coworkers, witnesses who are not family members — is not § 38.111 either, although it may raise witness-tampering concerns under Penal Code § 36.05.
Letters, Calls, and Third-Party Messages: How Jail Contact Gets Charged
“By letter, telephone, or any other means” covers essentially every channel available to a confined person: calls on the recorded jail phone system, postal mail, messages sent through jail tablet and kiosk services, email where a facility offers it, and social-media posts or messages made through a contraband cell phone. The method does not change the offense — it changes the evidence.
Phone calls are the most common source of charges because they are the most thoroughly documented. Every county jail in the DFW area and every TDCJ unit records non-attorney calls; the systems tie each call to the inmate’s PIN, and investigators and district-attorney victim-services staff review calls in pending family-violence and sex-offense cases as a matter of routine. A single recorded call to the complainant’s number can generate a new criminal case the same week.
Mail works the same way: outgoing correspondence is logged, and non-privileged mail can be opened and read. Letters addressed to a third person with instructions to forward or read them to the victim — “give this to her,” “tell her I said this” — fall squarely within the statute’s “through a third party” language.
Third-party contact is the piece defendants most often misunderstand, so consider a hypothetical: a man sits in the Collin County jail awaiting trial on an indecency-with-a-child indictment. He asks his sister to text the child’s mother “to smooth things over before court.” The sister sends the text. The man has contacted “a member of the victim’s family” through a third party under § 38.111 even though he never touched a phone — and the recorded call in which he asked his sister to send the message is the State’s proof. The sister, for her part, has created potential criminal exposure of her own under the law of parties, Penal Code § 7.02.
The State must still prove the defendant directed the third-party contact. A mother who calls the victim’s family on her own initiative — without being asked — has not converted her confined son into a criminal. The line between a directed message and independent family diplomacy is one of the most productive factual battlegrounds in these cases.
What Are the Penalties for Improper Contact with a Victim?
Grading under § 38.111(d) turns entirely on the actor’s custodial status at the moment of contact — not on the content of the message, the number of contacts, or the victim’s reaction:
Status at the time of contact
Classification
Punishment range
Confined after being charged with (not yet convicted of) an Art. 62.001(5) offense
Two practical notes. First, the felony bump requires a felony conviction — a pretrial detainee facing even the most serious listed charge commits only the Class A version, and a charging instrument that alleges the felony grade against someone whose conviction has not become final is vulnerable. Second, the sentence for the new offense rarely tells the whole story: for a TDCJ inmate the new conviction can be stacked consecutively under Article 42.08(b), and for a pretrial defendant the new case reshapes bond, plea leverage, and punishment evidence in the underlying prosecution — often at a cost far exceeding one misdemeanor.
Elements the State must prove
To convict under § 38.111, the State must prove every element beyond a reasonable doubt:
The defendant was confined in a correctional facility — a jail, TDCJ unit, contract facility, or secure juvenile facility as defined by § 38.111(e);
The confinement followed a charge or conviction for an offense listed in Article 62.001(5), Code of Criminal Procedure;
The defendant contacted a victim of that offense or a member of the victim’s family;
The contact was made by letter, telephone, or any other means, directly or through a third party;
Before the contact, the facility director had not received qualifying written, dated consent and provided the defendant a copy; and
A culpable mental state — § 38.111 prescribes none, so Penal Code § 6.02(c) reads one in, and the State must prove the defendant acted at least recklessly with respect to the circumstances of the offense.
The mental-state element is easy to overlook and genuinely useful: a defendant who dictated a letter to a pen-pal service with no reason to believe it would reach the victim’s household, or who called a number without knowing it had been forwarded to the victim’s new phone, has a real argument that the State cannot prove even recklessness. And because the felony grade adds a seventh element — a final felony conviction for the listed offense — the defense should force the State to prove the judgment, not merely recite it.
How Do Prosecutors Prove a § 38.111 Case?
The State’s file in these cases is built from institutional records, which is both its strength and its weakness. The core exhibits are usually: recorded calls tied to the defendant’s PIN, call-detail logs showing the dialed number, mail logs and photocopies of outgoing correspondence, tablet or kiosk message exports, visitation records, and the testimony of the victim or family member who received the contact. To negate consent, prosecutors typically offer a records custodian or the facility director’s designee to testify that no written consent was on file.
Each link in that chain can be tested. PINs are shared, sold, and stolen inside jails — a call placed under the defendant’s PIN was not necessarily placed by the defendant, and voice-identification testimony has real limits. Handwriting attribution on unsigned letters is contestable. Kiosk accounts are used by cellmates. And the consent element is proved by an absence of records, which means the defense is entitled to audit the same consent file, the facility’s procedures for filing consents, and whether a consent delivered to a different office ever reached the “director” the statute names.
Charging mechanics are straightforward: the misdemeanor version proceeds by information in a county court, the felony version by grand-jury indictment in district court, and either can be filed while the defendant is still in custody on the underlying case — which is exactly when the new charge does its greatest strategic damage.
How § 38.111 Interacts with Bond Conditions and Protective Orders
Three separate legal fences can prohibit the same phone call, and it pays to keep them straight. First, § 38.111 itself: automatic, statute-based, limited to listed offenses, and applicable only while the defendant is confined. Second, bond conditions: under Code of Criminal Procedure Article 17.40, magistrates may impose any reasonable condition related to victim or community safety — and in sex-offense and family-violence cases a no-contact condition is nearly universal. Violating a bond condition is not always a new crime, but it authorizes the court to revoke the bond and reset it higher; our page on Texas bond conditions covers that machinery in detail. Third, protective orders: magistrate’s orders for emergency protection under Article 17.292, family-violence protective orders, and post-conviction orders all carry criminal teeth of their own — violating a protective order under Penal Code § 25.07 is a Class A misdemeanor that can rise to a felony with prior violations or when the violation involves assault or stalking, and repeated or stalking-related violations are charged as a third-degree felony under § 25.072.
The fences overlap but do not duplicate each other. A defendant who bonds out and then texts the victim commits no § 38.111 offense — he is not confined — but violates the protective order or bond condition. A confined defendant with no order in place at all still violates § 38.111 if his charge is listed. And a confined defendant subject to an emergency protective order who places one call can collect a § 38.111 count, a § 25.07 count, and a bond-revocation motion from the same recording. Prosecutors in the DFW counties routinely file the combination precisely because each piece independently pressures the defense in the underlying case.
Repeated unwanted communications can also be charged as harassment under Penal Code § 42.07 — a Class B misdemeanor that can rise to Class A — when the State believes the calls or messages were made with intent to harass, annoy, or alarm. Where a jail call is ugly enough, harassment becomes the fallback theory for conduct that does not fit § 38.111’s victim-and-family limits.
What Defenses Work Against a § 38.111 Charge?
L and L Law Group builds § 38.111 defenses around the statute’s own architecture — every element the State must prove is a door the defense can close:
Attribution — someone else made the contact. Shared PINs, borrowed kiosk accounts, unsigned letters, and calls placed by cellmates are endemic to jail life. The State must prove the defendant made or directed the contact, not merely that his account did.
The recipient is outside the statute. The person contacted must be a victim of the offense for which the defendant is confined, or a member of that victim’s family. Contact with mutual friends, the victim’s coworkers, or attenuated relations — in a statute that never defines “family” — is contestable ground.
The underlying offense is not listed. Article 62.001(5) is a specific list, not a vibe. Confinement on a non-listed charge — however serious — does not trigger § 38.111, and charging paperwork sometimes glosses over this.
Consent was on file. If the director received qualifying written, dated consent and provided the copy before the contact, there is no offense. The defense should subpoena the consent file and the facility’s intake procedures rather than accept a custodian’s summary.
The attorney-conduit affirmative defense. Section 38.111(c) protects indirect contact made through the defendant’s attorney solely for purposes of representation — witness interviews, affidavits of non-prosecution, mitigation work. Under Penal Code § 2.04 the defense carries this by a preponderance of the evidence.
No culpable mental state. Via § 6.02(c), the State must prove at least recklessness — a defendant with no reason to know the message would reach the protected person has a genuine failure-of-proof argument.
No completed contact. The statute punishes a person who “contacts” the victim. A letter intercepted in the mailroom that never reaches anyone arguably supports at most an attempt — a construction argument courts have not squarely resolved, and one worth preserving.
Grading challenges. The felony version requires confinement after a final felony conviction for a listed offense. Pretrial detainees, appellants whose convictions are not final, and defendants confined on misdemeanor versions of listed offenses face — at most — the Class A grade.
A second hypothetical shows how the pieces combine: a TDCJ inmate serving a sentence for sexual assault mails a birthday card to the victim, addressed in a cellmate’s handwriting because “his is neater.” The State charges the third-degree felony. The defense has an attribution issue to litigate (whose letter is it?), a consent file to audit, and — if conviction comes anyway — a sentencing fight over stacking under Article 42.08(b). None of that appears on the face of the offense report; all of it comes from working the elements.
Can an Improper-Contact Charge Be Dismissed or Expunged?
These cases almost never travel alone — they ride alongside the underlying sex-offense prosecution, and their outcomes are usually negotiated globally. Where the contact evidence is thin (attribution problems, scope-of-family questions, a consent file the facility cannot produce cleanly), prosecutors will sometimes dismiss the § 38.111 count to keep the jury’s attention on the chief case. Where the evidence is strong, the count becomes leverage: it is punishment-phase evidence, a bond-revocation predicate, and a ready-made argument that the defendant disregards court authority. Treating the “little case” casually is how defendants lose the big one.
Community supervision is legally available in the ordinary way for both grades — including deferred adjudication in appropriate cases under Code of Criminal Procedure chapter 42A — though a defendant already serving a prison sentence has little use for probation on the new count, and stacking rules can make even a short new sentence expensive.
Record relief follows the usual Texas rules. A dismissal or acquittal opens the door to expunction under Code of Criminal Procedure chapter 55A (formerly chapter 55) once the statutory conditions are satisfied. A conviction cannot be expunged. Nondisclosure is rarely the answer here for a structural reason: Government Code § 411.074 disqualifies applicants with convictions or deferred adjudications for offenses requiring sex-offender registration — and a § 38.111 defendant, by definition, was charged with or convicted of a registrable offense. Where the underlying case itself ends in dismissal or acquittal, expunction of both cases together is the path to a clean record.
County-by-County Practice Notes
Collin County. Class A improper-contact cases are filed in the Collin County Courts at Law and felonies in the district courts, all at the Collin County Courthouse (Russell A. Steindam Courts Building), 2100 Bloomdale Rd, McKinney. Cases typically originate from monitored calls and mail at the county detention facility, and the DA’s victim-services staff stay in close contact with complainants in pending sex-offense cases — contact attempts get reported quickly.
Dallas County. Misdemeanor counts go to the county criminal courts and felonies to the criminal district courts at the Frank Crowley Courts Building, 133 N. Riverfront Blvd. The adjacent Lew Sterrett Justice Center’s phone system is the usual evidence source; call recordings appear in discovery with the call-detail logs attached.
Denton County. Cases are heard at the Denton County Courts Building in Denton — county criminal courts for the Class A version, district courts for the felony. Jail-call review in pending family-violence and sex-offense cases is routine rather than exceptional.
Tarrant County. The Tim Curry Criminal Justice Center in Fort Worth houses both the county criminal courts and the criminal district courts, so both grades of § 38.111 move through the same building. Contact allegations arising from the Tarrant County Corrections Center are generally presented with the underlying case to the same prosecutor team.
Across all four counties the practical advice is identical: defense counsel should request the facility’s consent file, call-detail records, and mail logs early — the same records the State will use are frequently the records that unravel its case.
Case Process & Timeline
A § 38.111 case moves differently from most criminal cases for one simple reason: the defendant is already in custody when it begins. The new charge is processed inside the walls — the defendant is magistrated on the new offense under Code of Criminal Procedure Article 15.17, bond is set on the new case, and counsel is appointed or retained. Posting bond on the § 38.111 count alone rarely produces release, because the defendant is still held on the underlying case; in practice the new charge’s bond matters most as a number that follows the defendant into any global bond negotiation.
The misdemeanor version proceeds by information in county court; the felony version goes to a grand jury for indictment. From there the case tracks the familiar sequence — discovery, pretrial motions, negotiation, and trial or plea — but its schedule is usually yoked to the underlying prosecution, and most resolutions happen as part of a single package covering both cases.
A parallel administrative track runs inside the facility at the same time. Jails and TDCJ units treat victim contact as a disciplinary violation independent of the criminal charge: expect phone and visitation privileges to be restricted, custody-level reclassification, and — in TDCJ — disciplinary findings that affect line class and good-time earning. Those consequences arrive within days, long before the criminal count is resolved, and nothing about beating the criminal case automatically undoes them.
Enhancements & Collateral Consequences
The grading rule in § 38.111(d) is itself the enhancement: Class A misdemeanor as the baseline, third-degree felony when the actor is confined after a felony conviction for a listed offense. Beyond that, the statute’s real cost is structural. If the offense was committed while the defendant was a TDCJ inmate still serving a sentence for a non-state-jail felony, Article 42.08(b) makes cumulation mandatory — the judge shall stack the new sentence to begin when the current one ends. For defendants in county custody, stacking remains discretionary under Article 42.08(a), and fighting cumulation is often the most valuable sentencing work in the case.
Parole consequences are just as concrete. A pending § 38.111 charge or a new conviction lands in the parole file as evidence of institutional misconduct and continuing risk to the victim — a heavy weight against release on an inmate whose underlying offense already draws close scrutiny. Facility disciplinary findings compound the damage through lost good time and reduced earning class.
Notably, § 38.111 is not itself on the Article 62.001(5) list — a conviction adds no new registration duty. But for a client hoping one day to seek early termination of registration or favorable risk-level assessment, a victim-contact conviction is exactly the wrong entry in the file: risk evaluators and judges read it as offense-related conduct, not a jail rule violation. The conviction also supplies ready evidence for longer or renewed protective orders, and it surfaces in family-court and CPS proceedings where custody or reunification is contested. Non-citizens should have immigration counsel review both cases together — a fresh conviction layered onto a registrable-offense case narrows relief options in removal proceedings.
How Does § 38.111 Differ from Related Charges?
Texas law contains a cluster of offenses policing contact with victims, and prosecutors choose among them based on where the defendant is and what orders exist:
Violation of a protective order — Penal Code § 25.07. Order-based rather than status-based: it requires an existing protective order, magistrate’s order, or qualifying bond condition, applies in or out of custody, and covers family-violence, sexual-assault, stalking, and trafficking cases. Class A misdemeanor, with felony grades for repeat violations or violations committed by assault or stalking.
Harassment — § 42.07. Communication-based: repeated calls, texts, or messages sent with intent to harass, annoy, or alarm, whoever the recipient is. Class B misdemeanor, rising to Class A with a prior conviction. Jail calls that fall outside § 38.111’s victim-and-family limits sometimes come back as harassment counts.
Tampering with a witness — § 36.05. When the message asks the victim to drop charges, change testimony, or skip court, the State can charge witness tampering — generally a third-degree felony — instead of or in addition to § 38.111. The line between “I miss you” and “don’t show up” is the line between a misdemeanor and a felony.
Section 38.111’s niche in that cluster is precise: it is the only one that operates automatically, without any court order, and it applies only to confined defendants held on registrable sex offenses. Understanding which fence the State says was crossed — and whether the facts actually fit that fence — is the first analytical step in every one of these cases.
Key Legal Terms
Improper Contact with Victim (§ 38.111)
Contact — by letter, telephone, or any other means, directly or through a third party — by a person confined on an Article 62.001(5) offense with the victim of that offense or the victim’s family, without written consent on file with the facility director.
Reportable Conviction or Adjudication (Art. 62.001(5))
The Code of Criminal Procedure’s sex-offender-registration list — sexual assault, indecency with a child, child-pornography offenses, and related crimes. Confinement on a listed charge or conviction is what brings a person within § 38.111.
Correctional Facility (§ 38.111(e))
Municipal and county jails, TDCJ units, and contract facilities under Penal Code § 1.07(a)(14), plus secure juvenile detention and correctional facilities defined by Family Code § 51.02.
Written Victim Consent
The statute’s two-step safe harbor: the facility director must receive written, dated consent from the statutorily authorized person and provide the confined person a copy — both before the contact. The confined person can never supply the consent.
Affirmative Defense (§ 38.111(c))
Indirect contact made through the defendant’s attorney, solely for purposes of representation in a criminal proceeding, defeats liability — proved by the defense by a preponderance of the evidence under Penal Code § 2.04.
Cumulative (Stacked) Sentencing (Art. 42.08)
A court’s power to run sentences consecutively. Stacking is discretionary in most cases but mandatory under Article 42.08(b) for offenses committed while an inmate in TDCJ still serving a non-state-jail-felony sentence.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it illegal to contact the victim of my case from jail in Texas?
If you are confined after being charged with or convicted of an offense listed in Article 62.001(5) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, yes — Penal Code § 38.111 makes contacting the victim or the victim's family a separate crime unless written consent is on file with the facility director. For non-listed charges, § 38.111 does not apply, but bond conditions and protective orders usually prohibit the same conduct.
Does § 38.111 apply to every criminal charge?
No. The statute reaches only people confined after being charged with or convicted of an offense listed in Article 62.001(5), Code of Criminal Procedure — the sex-offender-registration list, which includes indecency with a child, sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault, possession of child pornography, and similar offenses. Jail contact on a non-listed charge is policed through bond conditions and protective orders instead.
Can I be charged if a friend or family member passed the message for me?
Yes. Section 38.111 expressly covers contact made “either directly or through a third party.” Asking a relative to call, text, or visit the victim on your behalf is treated the same as making the call yourself. The State must still prove you directed the contact — a relative who reached out entirely on their own initiative is a different situation.
Is improper contact with a victim a felony or a misdemeanor?
It is a Class A misdemeanor — up to one year in county jail and a fine of up to $4,000 — unless you were confined after being convicted of a felony listed in Article 62.001(5). In that case it becomes a third-degree felony carrying 2 to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. Pretrial detainees who have not been convicted face the Class A version.
Can the victim consent to hearing from me?
Yes, but only through the statute's consent procedure. The facility director must receive written, dated consent — from the victim personally if the victim was 17 or older at the time of the offense, or from a parent, legal guardian, or adult family member if the victim was younger than 17 — and must give you a copy before any contact. Verbal permission, social-media replies, or the victim reaching out first does not satisfy § 38.111.
Can my lawyer contact the victim for me?
Communication routed through your defense attorney solely for the purpose of representing you in the criminal case is an affirmative defense under § 38.111(c). That is how legitimate case work — witness interviews, affidavits of non-prosecution, mitigation outreach — gets done safely. Using your lawyer to pass personal messages falls outside the defense.
What if the contact also violates a protective order or bond condition?
A single letter or call can produce several consequences at once: a § 38.111 charge, a violation-of-protective-order charge under Penal Code § 25.07, and revocation of your bond in the underlying case. Prosecutors routinely file these together, and each one independently strengthens the State's position in the original prosecution.
Are jail calls and letters really monitored?
Yes. County jails and TDCJ units record nearly every non-attorney call, and outgoing mail is logged and can be read. Recorded calls are the single most common source of § 38.111 evidence — and anything said on them is also admissible in the underlying case. Assume every call and letter will end up in the prosecutor's file.
Will a § 38.111 conviction add time to the sentence I am already serving?
It can. A new conviction carries its own sentence, and if the contact happened while you were a TDCJ inmate still serving a sentence for a non-state-jail felony, Article 42.08(b) of the Code of Criminal Procedure requires the new sentence to run consecutively — it begins only after the current sentence ends. A pending § 38.111 case also weighs against parole approval.
Can an improper-contact charge be expunged in Texas?
If the charge is dismissed or you are acquitted, expunction is generally available under Code of Criminal Procedure chapter 55A once the statutory conditions are met. A conviction cannot be expunged, and because § 38.111 cases arise while another case is pending or after a conviction, record relief usually turns on the outcome of both cases together.
Reggie London co-founded L and L Law Group with a focus on federal criminal defense, complex felony defense, and TEA/SBEC matters. Licensed in Texas, admitted to TXND and TXED.
Njeri London co-founded L and L Law Group with a focus on DWI defense, family violence cases, and juvenile defense. Licensed in Texas, admitted to TXND and TXED.
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