A man admitted he molested a young boy. Ken Paxton's office offered him a deal to serve one day in jail and never register as a sex offender.

That's not a typo. One day. And it took a judge — not the prosecutor — to stop it.

The case happened in Waco. A local attorney named Adam Hoffman was charged with continuous sexual abuse of a young child, a first-degree felony that can carry 24 years to life in prison. Prosecutors said he abused a boy who was between 8 and 10 years old, over a period of years. The boy told the court that Hoffman raped him and showed him pornography.

The case was being run by Ken Paxton's Attorney General's office. After the first trial ended in a hung jury, Paxton's prosecutors offered Hoffman a deal: drop the felony, plead guilty to two misdemeanors, serve a single day in jail, and skip the sex-offender registry. A man who admitted to abusing a child would have walked away with a record no worse than someone who got in a bar fight.

The judge had to do the prosecutor's job

When the deal came to court on April 16, the judge couldn't believe it.

"One day. Seriously? Somebody has to sell me on the wisdom of it."

That was Judge Roy Sparkman, a visiting judge who had served on the bench as a Republican. He refused to sign off. Paxton's prosecutors came back with 30 days. The victim's mother spoke up and said even that wasn't enough — "He's dangerous. This isn't justice." So the judge raised it to 60 days himself.

Think about that. The person whose entire job is to fight for the victim was the one pushing for one day. The judge — who is supposed to stay neutral — was the one fighting to make the punishment fit the crime.

This is the same Ken Paxton who calls everyone else soft on crime

Here's why this matters far beyond one courtroom.

For years, Ken Paxton has gone after local district attorneys across Texas, accusing them of being soft on crime and letting criminals run free. Last year, his office rolled out a new rule aimed at what he called "rogue" district attorneys. In his own words, local prosecutors in big counties had "endangered lives by refusing to prosecute criminals and allowing violent offenders to terrorize law-abiding Texans."

Strong words. He even tried to give himself the power to remove elected DAs from office if they didn't fall in line. (A Texas judge struck the rule down as outside his authority, and Paxton is appealing.)

So when an actual child sex abuse case landed on Ken Paxton's own desk — a case his office had full control over — how did Texas's self-appointed tough-on-crime crusader handle it?

He offered the guy one day.

Even fellow Republicans noticed the hypocrisy. Williamson County District Attorney Shawn Dick, a Republican, put it plainly: it is "ironic that Paxton is now facing criticism for this outcome when he frequently criticizes the work of local prosecutors who are faced with these difficult decisions daily."

It wasn't a one-time mistake. It was a pattern.

The judge in the Hoffman case said something that should stop every Texan cold:

"I'm seeing a pattern here that is concerning me. If they get a mistrial, all of a sudden it's just a little misdemeanor with a slap on the hand."

He wasn't guessing. He'd seen it before. Court records show three serious felony cases that Paxton's office took to trial, lost to a mistrial, and then quietly settled for little or no jail time:

• The Hoffman case — child sex abuse, pled down to two misdemeanors and (after the judge stepped in) 60 days.
• A murder-for-hire case in Waco — a man accused of trying to hire a hit man ended up pleading to a misdemeanor "terroristic threat" and a four-day jail sentence.
• A Bexar County human trafficking case — a man charged with holding two girls and a woman against their will and forcing them to perform sex acts for money. He got probation and skipped the sex-offender registry. Two years later he was rearrested and is now serving 22 years.

In every single one, the judge had to insist on a harsher punishment than what Paxton's office first proposed.

A veteran prosecutor who once led Paxton's own human trafficking division said she was sickened by how the trafficking case turned out. "You've got to be willing to go to trial on hard cases," she said. The prosecutor who cut the deal instead "walked away from that obligation."

What was Ken Paxton actually doing instead?

These are difficult cases — that part is real. Prosecuting child abuse is painful and messy, and a hung jury puts prosecutors in a genuinely hard spot. Experts the reporters talked to said so honestly.

But difficulty isn't the issue here. The issue is the man in charge.

While these cases were collapsing into one-day and four-day sentences, Ken Paxton was busy. He was indicted for securities fraud and dragged that case out for nearly nine years. He was impeached by the Texas House — with more than two-thirds of House Republicans voting to remove him — after eight of his own top deputies reported him to the FBI for bribery. He was running for U.S. Senate. He was attacking other prosecutors.

What he apparently wasn't doing was making sure his office fought hard for a child who said he'd been raped.

Who Ken Paxton really works for

A week before the Senate primary, this case has become a political problem for Paxton, and his rivals have been hammering him on it. That's the campaign angle. But strip the politics away and the simple facts are damning enough.

Ken Paxton wants more power over how crime is prosecuted in Texas. He says he's the one who's tough, and everyone else is soft. Then his own office — the one place where the buck actually stopped with him — offered a man who admitted molesting a child a single day behind bars.

He didn't keep that predator off the registry because the law forced him to. His prosecutors chose that deal. A judge had to overrule them to get to 60 days.

Ken Paxton has spent a decade telling us he's the toughest lawman in Texas. His own record says he's the one cutting the deals. We deserve better.

Source

This post is based on reporting by Neena Satija (The Texas Newsroom), Taylor Goldenstein (The Texas Tribune), and Molly-Jo Tilton (KWBU): "Inside the Waco child sex abuse case Ken Paxton's office agreed to settle for one day in jail," Houston Public Media, May 19, 2026, with additional reporting from KERA News and the Texas Attorney General's office.