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Most people we represent in these cases make their first call within hours of a law enforcement team leaving their home with every phone, laptop, and hard drive in the house. Nothing prepares a family for that morning. What you do in the days that follow, before any arrest warrant issues, can shape everything that comes after: how the arrest happens, how quickly your family member comes home on bond, and how the case itself gets defended.
I am a former Collin County prosecutor. My colleagues and I have spent our careers on both sides of these cases, and our team brings 15 combined years as prosecutors and more than 200 trials to every case we accept. We defend possession of child pornography cases across Collin County and Denton County with two commitments that do not change: we protect your rights and your privacy at every step, and we never lose sight of the fact that these laws exist to protect children. Taking the accusation seriously and defending the accused thoroughly are not in conflict. Both are the job. If you or a family member is facing a different allegation in this category, our Collin County sex crimes lawyer page covers the full practice.
Former Collin County prosecutors defending possession and promotion of child pornography cases under Texas Penal Code 43.26. Discreet, judgment-free representation from the moment the search warrant is executed. Every consultation is free and confidential. Call 214-764-5535 to speak with a Collin County child pornography defense attorney today. We answer 24 hours a day.
We prosecuted felony cases in this county. We know how these investigations are built, what the District Attorney’s office looks for, and what actually moves a negotiation.
Prosecutors treat cases differently when the defense lawyer across the table tries cases. Every case we take is prepared as if a jury will hear it.
Your consultation is confidential. We coordinate surrenders quietly, fight to keep clients out of general population, and treat every client and family with respect.
Possession or promotion of child pornography is charged under Texas Penal Code Section 43.26. The offense level for possession, or for accessing material with intent to view it, is driven primarily by the number of images or videos involved:
A prior conviction for possession of child pornography, or for any offense requiring sex offender registration under Chapter 62 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, elevates the offense one level. And if the offense occurs while the person works at a childcare facility or certain facilities that serve children, a first degree charge can carry a minimum of 25 years, which removes probation from the table entirely.
Promotion of child pornography, meaning distributing or possessing with intent to distribute, starts as a second degree felony and climbs with image counts and prior convictions.
Those tiers matter for more than sentencing. Because the charge level rests so heavily on a number, the number itself becomes one of the central battlegrounds of the case, which we explain below.
Almost none of these cases start with local police. They start with the platforms. Services like Discord, Kik, Reddit, and other social and messaging platforms run automated detection systems that flag images and videos suspected of containing child sexual abuse material. When a file is flagged, the platform reports it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which traces the IP address involved and refers the matter to law enforcement in that jurisdiction.
From there, local investigators work backward through a chain of administrative search warrants: one to the internet service provider to identify the account holder at that IP address, one to the platform to identify the username, and one to the email provider behind the account. They compare those identities against the people living at the address. Only after that identification work do they seek a search warrant for the home.
Understanding this pipeline matters for one reason: by the time officers arrive at the door, months of investigation may already be complete. The question is no longer whether an investigation will happen. It is how the next phase gets handled.
These warrants are not served by a single friendly officer. A full team arrives, sometimes with SWAT support, and they will seize every device in the home capable of reaching the internet or storing files: phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, external drives, even gaming consoles. It is a frightening experience for every member of the household.
Three things protect you in that moment:
Cooperate with the search itself. Once a warrant is produced, the search is happening. Resisting it can add a charge of resisting search or arrest. Interfering can add interference with public duties. And destroying or hiding a device is tampering with evidence, a third degree felony that is far easier for the State to prove than the underlying case. Do not hand the prosecution a charge it can prove in an afternoon.
Do not answer investigative questions. Statements made while you are detained during a search are admissible, and Miranda warnings are not required until after a formal arrest. Officers may separate family members, question a young adult away from parents, or suggest that cooperation will earn leniency from a judge. It will not. The safest words in the house that day are that you want to speak with your attorney.
Call a defense lawyer as soon as the officers leave. The window between the search and any arrest warrant is when the right preparation happens.
Forensic analysis of seized devices can take anywhere from a day to several months, and the arrest warrant usually follows it. If we are hired during that window, we put it to work.
We deliver a letter of representation to the detective, which stops any attempt to question our client without us present. We open a line of communication about what charges are actually being considered. And we ask for the professional courtesy that experienced detectives often extend: notice when the arrest warrant issues, so our client can surrender in an orderly, discreet way instead of being arrested by a team of officers at home or at work in front of neighbors, children, or an employer.
We then coordinate the logistics of the surrender itself, including where to turn in and how to reach magistration as quickly as the circumstances allow, so that time in custody is measured in hours rather than days.
Bonds in these cases run high. In Collin County we typically see amounts from 50,000 dollars on the low end to 100,000 or 200,000 dollars, with families usually paying about ten percent to a bail bond company that posts the full bond.
The single most valuable thing a family can do is have the bond arranged before the surrender. We connect clients with a bail bond company we have trusted for more than a decade, one that treats clients in these cases with respect. With paperwork completed in advance, the moment a bond amount hits the county system it can be posted, and a client who surrendered at the right facility can be walking out within the hour. Without advance arrangements, a family is watching the county website, shopping bondsmen, and signing paperwork while hours pass and a transfer to the county jail gets closer.
That timing has a purpose beyond convenience. New arrivals at the county jail are held in the book-in area for roughly the first 48 hours before being moved into general population. For a client facing this charge, we do everything possible to have bond posted before that move ever happens.
Courts in Collin and Denton County impose strict conditions in these cases. Expect severe limits on internet access, monitoring software installed on any internet-capable device you are allowed to keep, a complete prohibition on pornography of any kind, and restrictions on contact with anyone under 18, including distance requirements from schools, parks, and other places children gather.
Two practical realities we walk every client through. First, both counties currently use RemoteCom for device monitoring, and it does not run on Apple devices, so an iPhone user on bond will need an Android phone. Second, after a search warrant, promptly change the passwords on your cloud and email accounts. The accounts signed in on seized devices remain visible to investigators, and a new phone logged into the same account can expose everything on it.
The hardest condition for most families is the one that keeps a client away from their own home because a child lives there. These cases can take many months, sometimes more than a year, to reach an indictment, and no family can simply relocate a parent or a young adult sibling indefinitely.
Courts put child safety first, as they should. Our job is to give the court verified, independent reasons to trust the home. We do it in steps rather than asking for everything at once:
For a young adult client living with parents and a minor sibling, the same tools plus the parents’ testimony about a household safety plan give us the strongest available case for a carve-out that lets the family stay under one roof.
One caution we give every family: cooperate with CPS on verifying the child’s environment, but the client should never give CPS an interview. Those statements go into a report prosecutors can read.
Here is a reality of these cases in Collin and Denton County: prosecutors take a hard line, first offers usually involve prison time, and when the investigation holds up, the case becomes a fight about mitigation and the client’s future rather than guilt.
That fight is won early. We have clients complete a psychosexual risk evaluation with a licensed sex offender treatment provider soon after arrest. The evaluation is built on peer-reviewed, nationally recognized testing, and it speaks directly to the questions a court and a prosecutor care about: is this person a low risk, and will they comply with supervision. It also strengthens every bond modification we file.
Just as important, the evaluation starts weekly treatment immediately. When we ask a prosecutor for deferred adjudication instead of prison, the first question is always whether our client has started treatment. There is a world of difference between a client who began a program the month before a hearing and one who has attended every week for the past year. The first reads as strategy. The second reads as accountability, and it gives the treatment provider a full year of observation to testify about if we end up in an open plea asking a judge for deferred adjudication while the State asks for prison.
The warrants. Every case begins with a chain of administrative and physical search warrants, and a constitutional defect anywhere in that chain can suppress the evidence that flows from it. We examine every affidavit and every step. Candidly, the detectives who work these cases for the larger Collin County agencies are experienced, so the strongest warrant challenges often arise in cases handled by agencies that rarely see them. We look either way.
The count. Because the offense level is set by the number of images, the count is not a detail. It is the charge. Collin County agencies rely on forensic extraction tools and, increasingly, an automated image-recognition program that flags what it believes is prohibited material, and charging decisions often track the program’s count. Grand juries do not review every image, and prosecutors review few. After indictment, we review every flagged item ourselves on the secure review computer at the District Attorney’s office, because the material cannot lawfully be copied or removed. We have seen flagged items that were not child pornography at all, and counts that placed a case a full felony tier higher than the evidence supported. Correcting the count can move a first degree case to a second or third, and the structure of the statute makes that correction procedurally easy for a prosecutor to accept: it is a lesser included offense on the same paperwork, not a dismissal and re-indictment.
Whether the material is what the State says it is. The statute requires proof that the material depicts a person under 18. For borderline images, that is a genuine jury question, and doubt on enough images changes the tier or the outcome.
AI-generated imagery. Image generation technology has created questions the law is still catching up to. Material that is plainly not a real person is one category. Lifelike computer-generated images are another, and proving beyond a reasonable doubt that a wholly artificial image depicts a person under 18 presents real difficulty for the State. This is a developing area of the law, and we are watching it closely.
The realistic path. Juries judge these charges harshly, and trials on guilt are rare. The proven route is to attack the warrants, scrutinize the count, contest what the material actually is, and build mitigation from day one, keeping trial available for the case that truly presents a triable question.
The outcome we pursue first, whenever the case gives us the opening, is a resolution that does not require sex offender registration at all. That means convincing prosecutors to change the charge from possession or promotion of child pornography to an alternative offense that carries no registration requirement. It takes true effort to get there. Procedurally, it requires the State to dismiss the child pornography case and re-file it under a different offense, and prosecutors do not take that step as a favor. They take it when everything we have built points to the same conclusion: the early start on treatment, the mitigation case assembled month by month, and the diligent review of the evidence for weaknesses are all designed to convince prosecutors that theirs is a weak case for the State and that our client is not the defendant they need to worry about. We work to convince them that lifetime registration is unnecessary for our client. Prosecutors take these charges very seriously, so we cannot guarantee any outcome. But with lifetime registration and prison time as real consequences rather than theoretical ones, it is critical that we jump on our client’s defense right away.
When we secure deferred adjudication in a case under Section 43.26, the client avoids prison and avoids a felony conviction, which keeps doors open that a conviction closes permanently. It is an honest part of this conversation that deferred adjudication still requires sex offender registration, and in Collin County it comes with the probation department’s specialized caseload: weekly treatment, closer supervision, and monitored computer use.
Registration is not always forever. Texas law allows a person to petition for early termination of the registration requirement with the court and DPS on a showing of rehabilitation. In our experience, clients whose cases arose under Section 43.26 have had the strongest track record in those petitions, and the twelve months of documented treatment we build during the case becomes the foundation of that petition years later. We plan for the deregistration petition from the beginning, because the goal is not just resolving the case. It is giving our client a route back to a full life.
Every case we accept is quoted as a flat fee, in writing, at the consultation. The cost never grows with each phone call, and your defense does not stop because a retainer ran out. Your consultation is confidential, and we understand that discretion, with your employer, your neighbors, and your extended family, is part of what you are hiring.
If a search warrant has been executed at your home, or a detective has contacted you or a family member, call us now at 214-764-5535. We answer 24 hours a day, and our McKinney office sits minutes from the Collin County Courthouse, with offices in Frisco and Dallas as well.
We have published detailed guides to the parts of the process that matter most in these cases. Start with our overview of sex crime defense in Collin County, then read about how sex offender registration works in Texas and how the Texas grand jury process works. For the full picture of how felony cases move through the local courts, see defending a criminal case in Collin County.
Forensic analysis of the seized devices comes next, and it can take days or months. An arrest warrant usually follows the analysis. This window is the most valuable time in the case: it is when representation is established, surrender logistics are arranged, bond is prepared in advance, and evaluation and treatment can begin.
In Collin County we typically see bonds between 50,000 and 200,000 dollars in these cases, with families paying roughly ten percent to a bonding company. Arranging the bond before surrender is the difference between hours and days in custody.
Not immediately in most cases, but often over time. Courts start from child safety and require verified reasons to trust the home. Through Children’s Advocacy Center interviews, CPS closeout findings, certified chaperones, and staged bond modifications, we work clients back toward their families step by step.
It can be, depending on the offense level, the count, and the mitigation built during the case. Deferred adjudication avoids prison and a conviction, though it carries registration and a specialized probation caseload. A client who has been in weekly treatment for a year is in a far stronger position to ask for it than one who has not.
Questions about what you must provide, and when, have constitutional dimensions that depend on the specifics of your case. Do not answer investigative questions or make decisions about your devices before speaking with a defense attorney.
Artificially generated imagery raises unsettled legal questions, including whether the State can prove an artificial image depicts a real person under 18. It is a developing defense frontier, and it makes early, careful review of the actual material more important than ever.
Not necessarily. Texas law permits petitions for early termination of registration on a showing of rehabilitation, and in our experience clients in possession cases have had the strongest results. We build the treatment record that supports that petition from the first months of the case.
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Sex crime allegations carry severe penalties and lifelong stigma. Our Frisco defense team builds a strategic response aimed at safeguarding your record and future.
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When facing the Texas parole system, experience is important. My Dallas Criminal Lawyer brings years of experience representing clients before the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.
Collin County
May 2026
Dismissed
Assault Causes Bodily Injury Family Member
Collin County
May 2026
Dismissed
Assault Causes Bodily Injury Family Member Class A
Collin County
May 2026
Dismissed
Robbery
Collin County
April 2026
Dismissed
Tampering with Evidence
Collin County
April 2026
Dismissed
Assault Family Violence
Collin County
April 2026
Refused
Assault Family Violence
Denton County
March 2026
Refused
Continuous Assault Family Violence
Collin County
April 2026
Dismissed
Tampering with Evidence
Eddie C.
Justin is a truly talented lawyer. His ability to think critically, and analyze quickly, are just a couple of traits that make him an excellent advocate for anyone charged with a crime. I’ve sat next to him in the courtroom and it is truly amazing to see him connect with a jury. He is an absolute pro.
Kamran V.
This law firm did an outstanding job for me. From start to finish, they were professional, knowledgeable, and supportive. They delivered exactly what they promised, and I couldn’t be happier with the result. I highly recommend them to anyone who needs legal help.
Thomas A.
Justin Wilson and Justin Harris were amazing. Highly recommend them.
Lybbie
I trust Justin for any legal related questions and he certainly delivers. I recommend him 100% as he is committed to you from start to end- no matter the situation.
Cristal D.
Absolutely the best team you could ask for. From start to finish, the entire office was professional, compassionate, and truly dedicated. They made me feel heard, respected, and confident during one of the most stressful times of my life. Their communication was consistent, and you can tell they genuinely care about their clients and their outcomes.
If you’re looking for a lawyer who is sharp, honest, and will fight for you like it’s personal – this is the team you want on your side. I can’t thank them enough for everything they did. They truly are the best in the business.
Natalie M.
Justin Harris was an exceptional lawyer- he is hardworking and dedicated and will reach your needs and more.
He was reliable and professional in every way. He makes sure that you are not only heard but seen. When working with Justin- it gave me strong trust that he cared and that he is a man of his word.
Highly recommend this law firm. Justin and the team handled my case with the upmost care, always kind and professional, and let me know all the details every step of the way.
Prof. Carlos R.
My first impression with Justin and Heidi was that they are a first class law firm, very professional and very open to answering questions and making a person feel appreciated. I am glad I met both at Formation in Frisco Texas.
Alex C.
I have come to know Justin and his team through my practice as a civil lawyer, and Justin has always impressed me with the way he treats his clients, and his ability to clearly explain options. He works tirelessly to be prepared for all his cases, and always treats others with professionalism and respect.
Joshua J.
Justin is a super professional lawyer with positive results. I would refer Justin to any one who needs help with anything. Justin gets it done with positive results.
Yoker V.
I highly recommend Justin 100%, the total positive experience started the moment we first spoke. Justin is a complete and total professional and a highly skilled lawyer outside and especially inside the courtroom. My case had its challenges but Justin skillfully did his research and presented the court and jury a master class. At the end of the trial the judge looked at the prosecutor and said, ” That’s how it’s done.” YLV
If a search warrant has been executed, if a detective has called, or if a family member has just been arrested, do not wait. Call 214-764-5535 now. Consultations are free, confidential, and available 24 hours a day, and every case we accept is quoted as a flat fee in writing.
| Our team is available by phone 24/7 | Office Hours |
|---|---|
| Monday | 8AM – 5PM |
| Tuesday | 8AM – 5PM |
| Wednesday | 8AM – 5PM |
| Thursday | 8AM – 5PM |
| Friday | 8AM – 5PM |
| Saturday | Closed |
| Sunday | Closed |
| Our team is available by phone 24/7 | Office Hours |
|---|---|
| Monday | 8AM – 5PM |
| Tuesday | 8AM – 5PM |
| Wednesday | 8AM – 5PM |
| Thursday | 8AM – 5PM |
| Friday | 8AM – 5PM |
| Saturday | Closed |
| Sunday | Closed |
| Our team is available by phone 24/7 | Office Hours |
|---|---|
| Monday | 8AM – 5PM |
| Tuesday | 8AM – 5PM |
| Wednesday | 8AM – 5PM |
| Thursday | 8AM – 5PM |
| Friday | 8AM – 5PM |
| Saturday | Closed |
| Sunday | Closed |
