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get directions When a Texas prosecutor agrees to “reduce” your DWI, the court does not lower the charge. The State dismisses the DWI outright and files a separate new charge under a new cause number, and you plead to that one instead. Two filings, two cause numbers, one deal. Almost nobody explains this, and it changes what happens to your record in ways that matter for years.
We handle these in Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bell and the surrounding Central Texas counties, and the mechanics are the same everywhere: the reduction is a trade, not a downgrade.
The dismissal paperwork tells the story. For example, Williamson County’s standard dismissal form gives the prosecutor a menu of reasons to check, and one of them reads: as part of a plea bargain in which Defendant pleaded “guilty/no contest” in companion case ______. The clerk stamps the DWI dismissed. On the same day, in the same court, you plead to a different offense that the State filed separately.
You end up with one cause number showing a dismissal and another showing what you pleaded to. The two are treated very differently by the statutes that let you clear your record. Which charge you plead to decides how much of your record can eventually be destroyed rather than merely hidden.
The elements of the new charge often do not line up neatly with what the officer originally alleged. That is not an accident and it is not a defect. It is the point. The new charge exists so that a DWI does not attach to your criminal history.
Prosecutors in Central Texas typically reduce a DWI to one of three things. They are not interchangeable, and the difference between the best and the worst of them is the difference between a record that can be erased and one you carry in some form permanently.
| Reduced to | The reduced charge ends up | The dismissed DWI |
|---|---|---|
| Class C misdemeanor | Dismissed and expungeable | Expungeable |
| Obstructing a highway (§42.03) | Sealable only, never destroyed | Expungeable |
| Reckless driving (§545.401) | Sealable only, never destroyed | Expungeable |
Everything below explains that table.
If a prosecutor will reduce your DWI to a Class C misdemeanor, still filed as a separate traffic offense with its own cause number, take that conversation seriously. It is the only path on which both records can eventually be destroyed.
Here is why it works. Texas law generally says that if you were placed on court-ordered community supervision, you cannot expunge the case. A Class C misdemeanor is the exception. Under Code of Criminal Procedure Article 45.051, a justice or municipal court judge can grant deferred disposition. That means deferring entry of judgment for up to 180 days and dismissing the charge outright if you satisfy the court’s conditions. Article 45.051(e) expressly permits expunction of a Class C dismissed that way.
That makes a Class C deferred disposition close to unique in Texas law: a disposition involving supervision that still leaves the record destructible.
On timing, a Class C carries the shortest waiting period in the expunction statute, 180 days from the date of arrest. And because deferred disposition itself runs up to 180 days, completing your deferred disposition generally puts you at or past that mark already. In practice, eligibility has already arrived by the time you have finished the deferred disposition.
The dismissed DWI is a separate clock. Because it was dismissed as part of a plea bargain rather than through a diversion program, it runs on the limitations timeline described further down this page, which usually means longer. But it is expungeable, and that is the point: on the Class C path, nothing from the arrest has to stay on your record permanently.
Do not take a conviction on the Class C.
A conviction can never be expunged. The deferred-disposition dismissal is the only reason that Class C record is destructible in the first place. Pay the fine, plead it out as a straight conviction, and you have traded away the entire benefit of the deal.
The result is the worst version of a good outcome: the DWI eventually comes off your record, and a permanent Class C conviction stays on it, on a charge that could have disappeared completely. People do this by accident, usually by treating the reduced charge as “just a ticket” and paying it.
If you take a Class C reduction, the words that matter are deferred disposition. Get it in the agreement and complete every condition.
Most DWI reductions land one tier higher, on one of two offenses. Both leave you better off than a DWI. Neither can ever be expunged under the current state of the law.
Obstructing a highway or other passageway, Texas Penal Code §42.03. A Class B misdemeanor, punishable under §12.22 by up to 180 days in county jail and a fine up to $2,000. The statute carries enhancements that do not apply to a typical DWI reduction: a state jail felony under §42.03(c-1) for knowingly blocking an authorized emergency vehicle or hospital access, a Class A misdemeanor under §42.03(d) for a reckless driving exhibition, and a state jail felony under §42.03(e) for repeat or aggravated exhibition conduct.
Reckless driving, Texas Transportation Code §545.401. Reckless driving is commonly described online as a Class B misdemeanor. It is not. Section 545.401(b) assigns it no Penal Code class at all and sets its own punishment range: a fine not to exceed $200, confinement in county jail for not more than 30 days, or both. That is materially lighter than a traditional Class B.
If you have been reading other websites that call reckless driving a Class B misdemeanor, that is one reason to be careful about where you get this information.
Between those two, most people guess wrong. Reckless driving sounds worse than obstructing a highway. On the statutes it is better, on both axes that matter.
The punishment range is lower, as above. And the sealing timeline is shorter, for a reason buried in the nondisclosure statute. Government Code §411.0725 governs sealing after a successful deferred adjudication and sets the waiting period by offense category. Under §411.0725(e)(2), a two-year wait applies to misdemeanors under Penal Code Chapters 20, 21, 22, 25, 42, 43, or 46. Everything else falls under §411.0725(e)(1), which allows the petition upon the discharge and dismissal, with no waiting period at all.
Obstructing a highway is Penal Code §42.03. Chapter 42. It is on the two-year list. Reckless driving is a Transportation Code offense and is not a Penal Code chapter on that list at all.
So a completed deferred adjudication on reckless driving can be petitioned for sealing right away, while the same disposition on obstruction waits two years. In our experience in Central Texas courts, that difference plays out exactly as the statutes read. If a prosecutor offers you a choice between them and your priority is a clean record, the charge that sounds worse is the one you want.
Ask for deferred adjudication, not straight probation.
With deferred adjudication the court withholds a finding of guilt. Complete the supervision and the case is dismissed, and that dismissal is what makes sealing possible later. A straight conviction closes that door.
This is also the entire reason getting out of Chapter 49 matters. Government Code §411.0725(a)(2) expressly excludes Driving While Intoxicated under Penal Code §49.04 and Boating While Intoxicated under §49.06 from the section. A DWI cannot be sealed by that route at all. Moving the case to a non-intoxication offense is what makes sealing available.
One caution, because many pages get it wrong: a prior record does not automatically disqualify you. Texas has two nondisclosure tracks. The automatic track, §411.072, does impose a hard requirement, never previously convicted of or placed on deferred adjudication for anything but a fine-only traffic offense, but it also excludes the listed misdemeanor chapters, including Chapter 42. An obstruction case therefore runs the petition track, where prior history is not a bar. It is something the prosecutor and judge may weigh in deciding whether sealing serves the interest of justice, which is very different from being ineligible.
Some offenses can never be sealed at all. Government Code §411.074 permanently bars nondisclosure for sex-offender-registration offenses, a specific list of violent offenses, and any offense involving family violence as defined by Family Code §71.004, including where the court makes an affirmative family-violence finding. If your case has any family-violence component, the analysis is different and you should not rely on the general discussion here.
Yes, in the right circumstances. This is the part that surprises people who were told a plea deal ruins everything.
Texas expunction law now lives in Chapter 55A of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which replaced the former Chapter 55 effective January 1, 2025. Under the former numbering, the Texas Supreme Court answered this question directly.
In Ex parte R.P.G.P., 623 S.W.3d 313 (Tex. 2021), the petitioner was arrested for misdemeanor DWI. An inventory search of his vehicle turned up marijuana and he picked up a companion possession charge. He completed a pretrial intervention program, the DWI was dismissed, and he pleaded no contest to the companion charge. When he moved to expunge the DWI, the State argued the arrest was indivisible, so nothing could be expunged unless everything qualified.
The Supreme Court rejected that, holding that under former Article 55.01(a)(2)(A) misdemeanor offenses are eligible for expunction on an individual basis, and granted partial expunction of the DWI records. The Court’s earlier decision in State v. T.S.N., 547 S.W.3d 617 (Tex. 2018) had established the same offense-based reading in the acquittal context.
The line the Court drew is textual. The statute contrasted an instrument charging “a misdemeanor offense based on the person’s arrest” with one charging “any felony offense arising out of the same transaction.” Singular against plural. A misdemeanor companion charge does not block expunction of the dismissed charge. A felony arising out of the same transaction does, and it contaminates the whole arrest.
That is the practical rule: if everything connected to your arrest stayed at the misdemeanor level, a dismissed DWI can be expungeable even though you pleaded to something else.
House Bill 4504 from the 88th Legislature repealed Chapter 55 and replaced it with Chapter 55A, effective January 1, 2025. Former Article 55.01(a)(2)(A)(ii) is now Article 55A.053. The Legislature described HB 4504 as a nonsubstantive revision, whose stated purpose was to “compile the relevant law, arrange it in a logical fashion, and rewrite it without altering its meaning or legal effect.” If you have found other pages citing Article 55.01 as current law, they have not been updated since the renumbering.
Expunction law here has moved repeatedly over the last decade and the litigation has not stopped. If you are eligible now, that is a reason to act rather than wait. Eligibility rests on a construction of a statute the Legislature has amended many times, and nobody can promise you the landscape in three years looks like the landscape today.
Not every dismissal is treated the same by the expunction statute. Article 55A.053 reaches dismissals that happened for a specific, enumerated set of reasons:
A dismissal you got as part of a plea bargain is not on that list. That produces two very different timelines out of what looks like the same good result:
| How your DWI was dismissed | When you can seek expunction |
|---|---|
| You completed a pretrial intervention program | On the dismissal |
| You took a reduction and pleaded to a new charge | After the limitations period expires |
A client choosing between a pretrial intervention program and a reduction is not only choosing what punishment to accept. They are choosing whether the record can be erased in a matter of weeks or a matter of years. That is worth knowing before the deal is done.
If your DWI was dismissed as part of a plea bargain, expunction runs on the limitations clock under Article 55A.054, and the arithmetic is not what people assume.
So the clock runs from the offense, stops when the State files the charging instrument, and starts again when the case is dismissed.
Here is what that looks like on a real Williamson County file. Offense date in early May. The State did not file the complaint and information until mid-September, roughly four and a half months later. The case was dismissed the following June. Because the clock ran during that four-and-a-half-month gap and was frozen for the nine months the case was pending, eligibility lands more than eight months later than “two years from the arrest” would suggest.
And here is the part nobody tells you: the longer the State takes to charge you, the sooner you become eligible after a dismissal. A case filed four months after the arrest burns four months of the limitations period. A case filed two weeks after burns two weeks. Most people read prosecutorial delay as bad news. For this one purpose it works in your favor.
If your case involves an assault with a family-violence relationship, Article 12.02(b) sets a three-year limitations period rather than two, which changes the arithmetic.
One important exception, if the State never filed on you at all. Everything above assumes a charging instrument was filed and later dismissed. If you were arrested and the State never presented an information or indictment, Article 55A.052 applies instead. A Class A or Class B misdemeanor arrest becomes eligible one year from the date of arrest provided no felony arose out of the same transaction, and three years for a felony or where a felony arose from the same transaction. That article also allows expunction with no wait at all where the attorney representing the state certifies that the arrest records are not needed for any criminal investigation or prosecution.
Every case is fact-specific. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
Which reduction you accept, and whether you get deferred disposition or deferred adjudication instead of a conviction, decides how much of this you can eventually erase. Those choices are made once, at the plea, and they are not revisitable afterward.
Call 512-369-3737. Offices in Austin and Georgetown, serving Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bell, Bastrop, Caldwell, Burnet, Coryell, Lee and Milam counties.
David D. White founded the Law Office of David D. White, PLLC and has practiced criminal defense exclusively since 2004. The firm represents clients across Travis, Williamson, Hays, Caldwell, Lee, Coryell, Bell, Burnet, Milam, and Bastrop counties. Three attorneys handle each case as a team — weekly case reviews and shared Clio notes — and by the first consultation, the firm has obtained the Probable Cause Affidavit, read it, and identified the state’s evidentiary weak points.
Expunction destroys the record. Non-disclosure seals it. Different statutes, different eligibility rules, different practical effects. The choice between them is not yours to make — Texas law decides which one y...
This page was written and reviewed by the attorneys at the Law Office of David D. White, PLLC, following our editorial guidelines. The firm has practiced criminal defense exclusively since 2004 across Travis, Williamson, Hays, Caldwell, Lee, Coryell, Bell, Burnet, Milam, and Bastrop County courts. The firm’s three attorneys — David White (managing attorney, practicing criminal defense exclusively since 2004), Kenneth Hines (associate, practicing Caldwell County courts since 2008; former General Counsel to the Texas Senate Jurisprudence Committee, 2010–2012), and Taylor Kacir (associate; former Senior Misdemeanor County Attorney, Bell County Attorney’s Office) — work each case as a team via weekly case reviews and shared Clio notes.
608 West 12th Street, Suite B Austin, TX 78701
706 Rock St, Georgetown, TX 78626
512-369-3737
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