My brother was recently arrested for selling alcohol to a minor during a sting by the local police and TABC. This is a Class A Misdemeanor with up to a $4,000 fine, 180 day loss of his driver's license, and up to a year in jail. He spoke to an attorney who said he would likely be looking at 12 to 18 months probation in place of jail time. This attorney quoted him a fee of about $2500 to represent him to try to get the charges reduced. My brother doesn't have that kind of money so he will be requesting a public defender at his court date in a couple of weeks.
Also, I'm not sure if this would matter or not but this "decoy" used in the sting did not fit within the guidelines set up by the TABC for minors used in these types of stings. TABC states on their website that the decoys must appear to be their age, cannot be over 18 years of age and "must be youthful in appearance", when males are used they must not be of large stature and must not have a beard or mustache. This particular decoy (according to my brother) was over 6 feet tall, at least 220 lbs, had a couple days worth of facial hair although not enough to be considered a full beard or mustache, and appeared to my brother to be at least 23 or 24 years of age. Most of the time when these stings are done in our town they make no arrests or they will only get 1 or 2, this time, using this decoy they arrested a server at nearly every business they attempted to buy from. Even other police officers working that night said they would have sold to the kid because he easily looked over 21. Would any of this be of any use in getting the charges reduced or dropped?
This is his first offense. Will the public defender also be able to help him get the charges reduced? Someone else suggested he could try to negotiate a deal with the District Attorney himself. Is this possible? If so, would it be advisable?
If there is anyone familiar with this sort of thing in Williamson County, what type of punishment could he be looking at?

