Texas Community Supervision (Probation) Eligibility Checker

What community supervision is — and the three kinds

Community supervision lets a defendant serve a sentence in the community under court-ordered conditions instead of sitting in jail or prison. Chapter 42A of the Code of Criminal Procedure — recodified in 2017 from the old Article 42.12 — is the controlling law. The three forms look similar day to day (reporting to a supervision officer, paying fees, following conditions), but they are legally distinct, and that distinction decides who qualifies.

Regular (judge-ordered) community supervision

After a conviction, the judge suspends the sentence and places the defendant on supervision. The judge’s power is broad but capped by art. 42A.054, which lists offenses the judge may not touch.

Jury-recommended community supervision

When a jury assesses punishment, it can recommend supervision; if it does, the judge must follow the recommendation. The jury’s power is narrower in some ways (no prior felony, ten-year cap) and broader in others (a deadly-weapon finding does not stop it).

Deferred adjudication

On a plea of guilty or no contest, the judge defers a finding of guilt and places the defendant on supervision. Finish successfully and there is no final conviction. Deferred is a judge-only tool — a jury cannot grant it.

Judge vs. jury: why it changes everything

In Texas, a defendant elects who assesses punishment — the judge or the jury — under Code of Criminal Procedure article 37.07. That single election reshapes the probation analysis. A judge is blocked by the art. 42A.054 list and by any affirmative deadly-weapon finding. A jury is blocked by neither of those, but it cannot recommend supervision for a defendant with a prior felony conviction, and it cannot recommend it on a sentence longer than ten years.

Deferred adjudication sits outside the judge-or-jury election entirely. It is available only on a plea to the court, so a jury is never in the picture. The Court of Criminal Appeals put it plainly in State v. Posey: deferred “may be granted only when there has been no finding of guilt.” If you go to trial and a jury convicts, deferred is off the table for that case. Choosing the assessor is therefore one of the most consequential early decisions in a case where probation is the goal.

Judge-ordered regular supervision and its limits

Under art. 42A.053 a judge may suspend a sentence and order community supervision for most misdemeanors and many felonies. A judge may do so even for a defendant who has a prior felony conviction — a key difference from the jury path. Three limits apply:

• The ten-year cap. A judge may not suspend a felony sentence that exceeds ten years (art. 42A.053(c)). Assess eleven years and regular supervision disappears.
• The art. 42A.054 (3g) list. The judge may not order regular supervision for the offenses enumerated in art. 42A.054(a) — including murder, capital murder, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery, aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault, indecency with a child, trafficking of persons, continuous sexual abuse of a young child, sexual performance by a child, and compelling prostitution. Lawyers still call these “3g offenses” after the old statute (former art. 42.12 § 3g).
• The deadly-weapon finding. An affirmative finding that a deadly weapon was used or exhibited during a felony bars the judge from ordering regular supervision (art. 42A.054(b)).

Jury-recommended supervision

When the jury assesses punishment, art. 42A.055 lets it recommend that the judge suspend the sentence. Two gates control:

• No prior felony. Before trial, the defendant must file a sworn motion stating he has never been convicted of a felony, and the jury must find that statement true (art. 42A.055(b)). One prior felony conviction closes the jury door — even though a judge could still grant supervision for the same eligible offense.
• Ten years or less. A jury cannot recommend supervision if it assesses more than ten years’ confinement.

What the jury path is not blocked by matters just as much. A deadly-weapon finding does not stop a jury from recommending supervision, and a jury can reach some serious offenses a judge cannot. But art. 42A.056 draws a hard line for the most serious sex offenses — sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault, indecency with a child by contact, and the like — barring both judge and jury. Whether the jury can act on a given 42A.054(a) offense is offense-specific, which is why the checker flags those cases as “limited — verify.”

Deferred adjudication

Deferred adjudication (arts. 42A.101–.102) is often the most valuable outcome because success avoids a conviction altogether. It also reaches offenses regular supervision cannot: because the art. 42A.054 bars apply to “regular” supervision, a deadly-weapon finding does not, by itself, defeat deferred — a point the Fourteenth Court of Appeals made in Tatum v. State.

Deferred has its own gates, and the biggest is intoxication offenses. For decades, no DWI could receive deferred. That changed on September 1, 2019: art. 42A.102(b) now allows deferred for a first DWI under Penal Code § 49.04 when the driver’s alcohol concentration was below 0.15. Deferred remains unavailable for DWI at 0.15 or higher, DWI with a child passenger (§ 49.045), a second or subsequent DWI, intoxication assault (§ 49.07), and intoxication manslaughter (§ 49.08). Article 42A.102 also restricts or forbids deferred for a range of sex offenses and for certain repeat offenders. A prior felony conviction, by contrast, does not statutorily bar deferred — though it heavily influences whether a judge will grant it.

The deadly-weapon finding: the single biggest probation-killer

An affirmative deadly-weapon finding is one of the most consequential events in a felony case. For probation purposes it does one specific thing: it removes the judge’s power to order regular community supervision (art. 42A.054(b)). It does not remove the jury’s power to recommend supervision, and it does not bar deferred adjudication. That asymmetry is exactly why the who-assesses-punishment election is so important when a weapon is alleged — electing the jury can preserve a probation option the judge no longer has. (The same finding also delays parole eligibility under Government Code § 508.145, a separate consequence outside this tool.)

How courts apply Article 42A.054

Three Texas decisions frame the eligibility map this tool encodes. All interpret the predecessor statute, former Article 42.12, which was recodified without substantive change as Chapter 42A.

Ivey v. State, 277 S.W.3d 43 (Tex. Crim. App. 2009), lays out the jury’s authority: a jury “may recommend community supervision even for some of the heinous offenses that a trial judge may not, and regardless of whether a deadly weapon was involved,” but it “may not recommend community supervision in a felony case when it has imposed a sentence longer than ten years,” and only where the defendant has sworn, and the jury has found, that he has never been convicted of a felony offense.

State v. Posey, 330 S.W.3d 311 (Tex. Crim. App. 2011), confirms the three-part structure of the statute — judge-ordered, jury-recommended, and deferred — and holds that “shock” community supervision (a judge releasing a defendant to supervision within 180 days of sentencing) is available only to a defendant who is eligible for judge-ordered supervision in the first place. A deadly-weapon finding that blocks the judge therefore also blocks shock probation.

Tatum v. State, No. 14-08-00684-CR (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] Apr. 30, 2009), draws the regular-versus-deferred line: “While an affirmative finding of use of a deadly weapon during commission of a felony offense bars a judge from imposing regular community supervision, it does not bar a judge from imposing deferred adjudication community supervision.” The same opinion notes that “regular community supervision is unavailable to all defendants adjudged guilty of aggravated robbery.”

What eligibility does not promise

Clearing every statutory bar in this checker means the court may grant supervision — not that it will. Eligibility is the floor, not the outcome. A judge weighing regular supervision or deferred still considers the facts, the victim, your record, and the plea agreement; a jury weighing a recommendation does the same. Prosecutors often bargain over the line between deferred and a conviction, and some courts grant supervision only with demanding conditions — treatment, monitoring, or a jail term as a condition of probation. Read a “may be eligible” result as an open door worth walking through with a lawyer, not a promise about how the case ends.

The eligibility ladder at a glance

The table below summarizes how each factor moves across the three pathways. It is a starting point, not a substitute for checking the exact offense and record against the statute with a lawyer.

Use the checker above to combine these factors for your specific situation. Remember that clearing every statutory bar only makes you eligible — the judge or jury still decides whether supervision is actually granted.