Adam Dean Hoffman sexually abused his son's best friend for three years, starting when the boy was in the third grade. Texas law classified that as a first-degree felony. The punishment: life without parole. Ken Paxton's Texas Attorney General's Office classified it as two misdemeanors and offered one day of county jail. Hoffman, 49, walked free on May 25, 2026, after serving just 29 days.
The case, which exploded into a campaign firestorm the week before Paxton's Republican Senate primary, documents something bigger than one difficult prosecutorial call. Three cases. Three serious felonies. Three mistrials. Three sweetheart deals. Each time, a judge rejected the original offer as inadequate.
The Deal That Shocked a Judge
Hoffman's trial on charges of continuous sexual abuse of a young child ended in June 2025 with a hung jury, 7 votes for conviction against 5. The victim, now 14, had testified in detail about years of abuse beginning at age 8. The jury could not reach unanimity.
Paxton's office had agreed to prosecute after McLennan County District Attorney Josh Tetens recused himself. Tetens had briefly conferred with Hoffman, then a practicing attorney, before Tetens was elected DA.
Ten months after the mistrial, Paxton's prosecutors presented a deal: Hoffman would plead guilty to two Class A misdemeanors, indecent assault and displaying harmful material to a minor. One day in jail. His law license would remain intact. No sex offender registration.
Prosecutors told the victim's mother they represented the state, not her, and could proceed without her consent.
Visiting Judge Roy Sparkman did not go along.
"One day. Seriously? Somebody has to sell me on the wisdom of it," Sparkman said during the April 16 hearing. He pushed the offer to 30 days and required Hoffman to surrender his law license for five years. At the April 27 sentencing, the victim's mother changed her answer.
"No," she told the judge when asked if she agreed to the deal. "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 served 29 of them under Texas's two-for-one good conduct credit rule, then walked out of McLennan County Jail on a Monday morning, his father and stepmother waiting to pick him up. He told reporters he just wanted to go home. He faces no sex offender registration requirement.
The victim's mother described what the experience cost her son. "He had no reason to lie. It flipped our lives upside down. He was my hero. In my eyes he became a man that day. It set him free and it gave him a little bit of a smile back."
A Pattern Nobody in Austin Can Explain
Sparkman said from the bench at sentencing that this was not his first encounter with this outcome from Paxton's office. He named a second case: Seth Sutton, a Waco defense attorney charged with solicitation of capital murder. That case also ended in a mistrial, and Paxton's prosecutors also brokered a misdemeanor plea. Four days in jail. Paxton's prosecutor told Sparkman their office had nothing to do with that prior case.
The Texas Tribune found a third. Rakim Sharkey was charged in Bexar County with continuous trafficking of persons, accused of holding two girls and an adult woman and forcing them into commercial sex acts. After a 2022 mistrial, Paxton's office agreed to probation and no sex offender registration. Two years later, Sharkey was arrested on first-degree felony charges. His probation was revoked. He is now serving 22 years. A veteran trafficking prosecutor who worked the case told the Tribune that a key witness was falsely described to the court as unavailable, when that witness had testified in an unrelated trafficking case the week before.
Three cases. Three serious felonies. Three mistrials. Three deals that drew public condemnation and judicial pushback. Paxton, who has spent years attacking local prosecutors for being soft on crime, has offered no public accounting for any of them.
"I'm seeing a pattern here that is concerning me." — Judge Roy Sparkman, from the bench at Adam Hoffman's sentencing, April 27, 2026
State Rep. Jeff Leach, chair of the House Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence, called the Hoffman outcome "the most negligently, recklessly handled case that I have ever seen come out of the Attorney General's Office." He formally invited Paxton to testify before his committee. Paxton has not responded.
Advocates for the victim's family called for Paxton's resignation. Republican legislators held a press conference on the McLennan County Courthouse steps. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, whom Paxton was running to unseat, ran ads featuring the case, writing on X that Paxton "could have stopped this one, but instead cut him loose to reoffend over and over again, putting more children at risk."
Paxton won the Republican primary anyway. Hoffman is in Nebraska. The victim's mother is still waiting for someone in Austin to explain how this happened.
Sources
- Former Waco attorney Adam Hoffman released from 60-day jail term after 29 days — KWTX, May 25, 2026
- Inside Ken Paxton's plea deal for a child sex abuse case — Texas Tribune, May 19, 2026
- Ex-Waco attorney sexual abuse case continues to spark controversy — KWTX, May 15, 2026
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