Stalking and Harassment in Texas: What the Law Says and How to Defend Yourself

A few text messages that will not stop. Repeated calls from a number you do not recognize. An ex who keeps turning up in the same places. Somewhere in that fog, Texas law draws a line where annoying behavior becomes a criminal charge, and people are often surprised to learn which side of the line the State thinks they are on.

Two statutes do the work: harassment under Penal Code § 42.07 and stalking under § 42.072. Harassment usually starts as a misdemeanor. Stalking is always a felony. If you have been accused of either in Collin County, what you do in the first days matters, and this article walks through what the law actually says.

What Counts as Harassment Under § 42.07

A person commits harassment when, with intent to harass, annoy, alarm, abuse, torment, or embarrass someone, they do one of the specific things the statute lists. The intent element matters: the State has to prove the purpose behind the conduct, not just that someone felt bothered.

The prohibited conduct includes:

• Initiating communication and making obscene comments, requests, or proposals
• Threatening bodily injury or a felony against the person, their family or household, or their property
• Conveying a false report that someone has died or been seriously injured
• Causing a phone to ring repeatedly, or making repeated anonymous calls
• Sending repeated electronic communications in a manner reasonably likely to harass, annoy, alarm, abuse, torment, embarrass, or offend
• Publishing repeated electronic communications on a website or social media in a manner reasonably likely to cause emotional distress, abuse, or torment
• Tracking or monitoring another person’s property or vehicle without their consent, whether with a tracking app, a tracking device, or by physically following them
• Making obscene or threatening calls from a temporary or disposable number provided by an internet application

Those last two entered the statute in 2023, and they matter in modern cases: an AirTag in a bag or a burner-app number can now be the center of a harassment charge.

Harassment Penalties

Harassment starts as a Class B misdemeanor, up to 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine. It becomes a Class A misdemeanor, up to a year in jail and $4,000, in several situations: a prior harassment conviction, electronic harassment of a child under 18 with intent to push the child toward suicide or serious self-harm, a prior violation of a protective or restraining order involving the same person, or an offense against a utility worker or court employee doing their job.

There are felony tiers too, and they are narrow: harassment of someone the actor knows is a judge is a state jail felony, as is harassment of a court employee when the actor has a prior conviction, and it rises to a third-degree felony when the target is a judge and the actor has a prior conviction under the section. Absent one of those enhancements, harassment is a Class B misdemeanor, which is serious enough: a conviction can appear in the criminal-history searches that employers, landlords, and licensing agencies run.

What Counts as Stalking Under § 42.072

Stalking is a separate felony offense with its own elements. A person commits stalking when, on more than one occasion and pursuant to the same scheme or course of conduct directed at a specific person, they knowingly engage in conduct that:

1. Constitutes harassment under § 42.07, or that they know or should know the other person will regard as threatening bodily injury, death, or an offense against a family or household member, an individual with whom the person has or has had a dating relationship, or their property;
2. Causes that person or their family, household, or dating partner to fear bodily injury, death, or an offense against property, or to feel harassed, terrified, intimidated, annoyed, alarmed, abused, tormented, embarrassed, or offended; and
3. Would cause a reasonable person in similar circumstances to feel the same.

A single incident is not stalking. Different kinds of conduct can be considered together under the “same scheme” language, repeated messages one week and an appearance at a workplace the next, but the State must still prove every other element of § 42.072. The statute also defines “property” to include a pet, companion animal, or assistance animal, so threats aimed at an animal can be part of a stalking case, and “dating relationship” carries the Family Code Chapter 71 definition, which includes qualifying current and former relationships.

Stalking Penalties, and a Collin County Example

Stalking is a third-degree felony: 2 to 10 years in prison and a fine up to $10,000. With a prior stalking conviction, including a substantially similar offense from another state, tribe, territory, or federal court, it becomes a second-degree felony: 2 to 20 years.

That ceiling is not theoretical here. In the fall of 2025, a Collin County jury convicted a Frisco man of stalking, and with a prior-conviction enhancement the punishment range doubled; he received the maximum 20 years, a case the District Attorney’s office publicized. The case shows that an enhanced stalking charge can carry substantial prison exposure in Collin County, which is worth understanding whether you are reading this as an accused person or a worried family member.

Can You Get Probation for Stalking? The 2025 Change

This is where the law just moved, and precision matters. Senate Bill 1021, effective September 1, 2025, added stalking to the list of offenses in Code of Criminal Procedure art. 42A.054 for which a judge cannot order community supervision after a conviction. That listing also carries a parole consequence: a prison sentence for a listed offense generally must be served half through, day for day, before parole eligibility.

Two doors remain open. The bill did not touch deferred adjudication under art. 42A.102, which stays legally available for stalking, and it did not touch jury-recommended community supervision, which remains possible in an eligible case. And the change is prospective: for conduct committed before September 1, 2025, the earlier law applies, and judge-ordered probation was available.

So a flat statement that stalking always means prison is wrong, and so is the old assumption that a judge can simply grant probation. What is realistic depends on the offense date, the path, the facts, and the record. Early defense work can preserve evidence, identify the disputed elements, and put relevant information in front of the right people before the big decisions get made.

How These Charges Are Defended

• Intent. Harassment requires proof of intent to harass, annoy, alarm, abuse, torment, or embarrass. The State has to prove the purpose behind the conduct, not just that the other person found it unwelcome. Context matters to intent, but a claimed practical purpose does not authorize unwanted contact or excuse conduct that meets the statute or violates an order.
• The course of conduct. Stalking requires more than one occasion tied to the same scheme. The State must establish that the incidents belong to the same scheme and satisfy both the actual-effect and reasonable-person elements.
• The First Amendment line. Not all offensive or unpleasant speech is criminal, and the electronic-communication provisions of these statutes have been fought over in the appellate courts for years. Where protected expression ends and criminal conduct begins is a live defense issue in the right case.
• Who sent it. Electronic cases turn on attribution. Screenshots do not resolve attribution by themselves; account records, device access, metadata, and witness testimony all bear on who actually sent a message.
• How the evidence was gathered. Phone downloads, account records, and searches all have rules. Evidence obtained in violation of constitutional or statutory requirements may be subject to suppression, and digital records sit at the center of many of these cases alongside witness testimony and other evidence.

One thing that is never a good defense strategy: contacting the complainant to straighten things out. In a pending case that can violate bond conditions or a protective order and hand the State a new charge, and since September 1, 2025, a person in custody on a stalking charge who contacts the victim commits a separate offense under Penal Code § 38.111. Do not initiate contact, directly or through anyone else, unless your lawyer has confirmed it is lawful and appropriate, and follow every bond condition and order exactly.

Accused of Stalking or Harassment in Collin County?

These cases carry emotionally charged allegations, and the record of messages behind them reads differently in a courtroom than it did at midnight. Kent Starr has defended criminal charges in Collin County and nearby North Texas counties since 1997, and he handles stalking and harassment cases along with the protective order violations and assault and family violence charges that often travel with them.

If you have been contacted by police or served with charging papers, do not give investigators a statement without counsel and do not delete anything. Talk to a lawyer first. The consultation is free and confidential, and Kent takes it himself: (214) 982-1408.

For the wider picture of how a criminal case moves through the local courts, see the Collin County criminal defense guide, and if a no-contact order is already part of your situation, what violating a no-contact order means in Texas covers that ground.

References

• Texas Penal Code § 42.07 (Harassment)
• Texas Penal Code § 42.072 (Stalking)
• Texas Code of Criminal Procedure art. 42A.054, 42A.102 (community supervision eligibility)
• Senate Bill 1021, 89th Legislature (2025): stalking and community supervision; improper contact with victim
• Collin County District Attorney: stalker receives maximum 20-year sentence (Oct. 2025)
• Fox 4 KDFW: Frisco serial stalker gets maximum prison sentence