While he may face several months in the county jail, he won’t face prison time unless he violates his probation in the future. “But there have been no, in my presence, feelings of remorse or questions of guilt or feeling sorry for the people whose lives he’s ended”, Anderson said.
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Ethan Couch, the Texas teen who’s “affluenza” case attracted national attention, can possibly face time in jail now that a judge has made a decision to try the 18-year-old as an adult.
While in Mexico Couch missed a mandatory meeting with his probation officer. Tonya Couch was quickly deported, and after being returned to Texas, she was released on bond with a Global Positioning System monitor.
Those inside included family members of Couch’s victims, representatives from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Couch’s father, Fred Couch, and an attorney for Couch’s mother. Following the brief transfer hearing, Tarrant County Sheriff deputies escorted a quiet and handcuffed Couch from the courthouse.
“Y’all have not even been to my house to see what we have to change, to see what we have to do every day with my brother in order for him to stay stable like this, alive, breathing”, Lumas said.
“Judge Menikos can also choose to let him go with conditions”, she said.
Prosecutors wanted the case moved to the adult court and the judge obliged on Friday. He will remain in jail until then.
Ethan Couch allegedly violated the terms of his probation from the drunken-driving case by missing a court-mandated check-in before he and his mother were apprehended in Mexico in late-December.
Prosecutors asked for 20 years in prison, but instead Ethan was sentenced to long-term mental health treatment and ten years of probation, the terms of which stipulate that he can not be in the presence of alcohol or drugs. He will then have another hearing when a district judge will set conditions for the remainder of his adult probation.
The maximum, Couch’s attorney Scott Brown said, is 180 days for a transitioning probationer convicted of a second-degree felony like Couch. An global manhunt found the pair in Puerta Vallarta.
Ethan Couch is now an adult – at least in the eyes of the law.
If he violates his adult probation during that time, he could get up to 10 years in prison for each of the four people killed in the wreck.
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Juvenile Judge Timothy Menikos ruled Friday morning Couch will be tried as an adult with his probation extending to February 2024.
