‘Affluenza’ teen Ethan Couch due in court Friday

A judge will decide Friday whether to transfer “affluenza” teen Ethan Couch’s juvenile probation to the adult court system.

Couch, who has been at Tarrant County’s maximum-security adult jail since Feb. 5, will appear in Judge Timothy Menikos’ juvenile court at 9:30 a.m. He was involved in a drunken-driving wreck in 2013 that killed four people.

If Menikos decides to transfer Couch’s case — which prosecutors and Couch’s attorneys expect he will — Couch will be assigned a new judge, who will set the terms and conditions for his adult probation.

Adult probation would go into effect in April, when he turns 19.

Menikos will also decide Friday whether to detain Couch until his birthday.

“[Menikos] has open options” about where to keep Couch and for how long, said Sam Jordan, a spokeswoman for the Tarrant County district attorney’s office.

Menikos transferred Couch to the adult facility from juvenile jail about a week after Couch returned to Texas from Mexico, where he had been on the run with his mother and then detained since December.

Couch’s mother, Tonya Couch, was flown to Los Angeles two days after they were captured in Puerto Vallarta on Dec. 28. Ethan Couch hired a Mexican attorney and fought extradition to the United States for about a month.

Greg Coontz, the attorney for the families of victims Bryan Jennings and Lucas McConnell, said he also expects Menikos to transfer Couch’s case.

Jennings, a 41-year-old pastor, was among those killed in Couch’s 2013 wreck. He and McConnell had stopped to help a stranded motorist before Couch’s Ford pickup truck plowed through the crowd. McConnell, then 12, was injured but survived.

The Jennings and McConnell families declined to comment Thursday.

Coontz said he hopes Friday’s hearing will be another step toward closure for the families. More than two years after the crash, they had started to accept Couch’s 10-year probation, considered by many to be a light sentence for killing four people, Coontz said.

The case got national attention at the time after a witness at the trial testified that Couch suffered from “affluenza,” because his parents never gave him consequences for his behavior.

Then Couch popped back into the news — first in a Twitter video of him allegedly partying, and then when he skipped a probation appointment and fled the country to Mexico with his mother.

“It never gives them a chance to move onto the next phase,” Coontz said. “It’s always Ethan doing this, Ethan doing that.”

Coontz said the families are hoping Couch will face a stricter probation under an adult judge, who could sentence Couch to 120 days in jail as a term of the probation.

“The ideal scenario is that whichever district judge makes the terms and conditions,” Coontz said, “that they make them pretty harsh to whatever point it takes to get his attention, to make him realize he has to put himself on a different path.”

This story was originally published February 18, 2016 at 1:01 PM with the headline "‘Affluenza’ teen Ethan Couch due in court Friday."