Ken Paxton Campaigned on Protecting Children. Then He Let a Child Predator Walk.
Ken Paxton has spent years positioning himself as Texas’ toughest prosecutor. He has attacked local district attorneys for being soft on crime. He has demanded more power over criminal prosecutions across the state. He has built his entire brand on being the man who holds predators accountable.
Then his office offered a child rapist one day in jail.
What Paxton’s Office Actually Did
Adam Dean Hoffman, a Waco attorney, was charged with repeatedly sexually abusing a young boy for years. The child testified in detail about what Hoffman did to him starting at age 8. Paxton’s office took over the prosecution after the local district attorney recused himself.
The case went to trial. It ended in a hung jury. Seven jurors believed the boy. Five did not.
Paxton’s prosecutors then met with the victim and his mother and proposed a deal: drop the first-degree felony charge of continuous sexual abuse of a young child, let Hoffman plead guilty to two misdemeanors, and sentence him to one day in jail. One day. Time already served from his initial arrest before he bonded out.
The deal also meant Hoffman would not be required to register as a sex offender.
The victim’s mother said prosecutors told her they represented the state, not her family, and that they could proceed with the deal whether she agreed or not.
“We were put in an impossible situation,” she said. “How do you trust the prosecution to go back to a case that they want to plead out when they’re the ones that are supposed to fight for it, and they don’t want to do it?”
The Judge Had to Stop Them
The only reason Hoffman did not walk out with a one-day sentence is that the judge refused to accept it.
“One day. Seriously? Somebody has to sell me on the wisdom of it,” said Judge Roy Sparkman at the April hearing.
Sparkman pushed back on the deal in open court, prompting prosecutors to revise their offer to 30 days. Even that was not enough. At the formal sentencing hearing, the victim’s mother had changed her answer.
“No,” she told the judge when asked if she agreed to the outcome. “It’s just not enough. He’s dangerous. This isn’t justice, and I can’t do it.”
Sparkman raised the sentence to 60 days. Hoffman’s defense lawyer accepted on the spot.
The judge had to fight Paxton’s own prosecutors to get a child predator more than a single day behind bars. And now, according to reports, Hoffman has fled the state of Texas entirely.
This Was Not an Isolated Mistake
Sparkman said explicitly from the bench that he had seen this pattern before from Paxton’s office.
A man charged with murder-for-hire received a misdemeanor and four days in jail after Paxton’s prosecutors took over the case and a mistrial was declared. A man originally charged with child sex trafficking received probation and no sex offender registration after another Paxton-managed mistrial. That man was rearrested two years later for first-degree felony burglary.
Three serious felony cases. Three mistrials. Three plea deals with little to no jail time. Three judges who had to demand harsher sentences than Paxton’s office proposed.
“I’m seeing a pattern here that is concerning me,” Sparkman said from the bench. “If they get a mistrial, all of a sudden it’s just a little misdemeanor with a slap on the hand.”
The Man Who Wants More Power Over Prosecutors
Last year, Paxton pushed through legislation expanding his office’s ability to take over human trafficking prosecutions statewide. He has separately moved to require local district attorneys to file detailed activity reports with his office. He has made himself the arbiter of whether local prosecutors are doing their jobs.
State Rep. Pat Curry, a Waco Republican, helped pass that legislation and now says he regrets it.
“Frankly, with the mistakes that I believe were made in this case, I will tell you that no, I don’t think I want to give them any more power over cases like this.”
That is a Republican state legislator, in Paxton’s own party, saying out loud that Ken Paxton’s office cannot be trusted with child sex abuse cases.
Paxton is currently running for U.S. Senate. He is asking Texas voters to give him even more power.
The boy who testified about being abused starting at age 8, who sat on a witness stand and told a courtroom full of strangers what was done to him, who did not want to go through that again, deserved a prosecutor who would fight for him.
He got Ken Paxton’s office instead.