Tonya Couch waives right to fight extradition to Texas

Ethan Couch is on probation for driving drunk on June 15, 2013, and crashing into an accident scene in southern Tarrant County, killing four people and injuring others, including passengers in his pickup truck.

Lawyers for the teen – who was 16 at the time of the crash that killed four people – successfully argued in 2013 he should not go to prison because he suffered from growing up in affluent circumstances.

Her son was sentenced to 10 years of drink- and drug-free probation, which critics saw as leniency because of his family’s wealth. She’s charged with hindering the apprehension of a felon and will be held on a $1 million bond.

The mother of “affluenza” teen Ethan Couch on Tuesday made a court appearance in California, where she was flown following the pair’s capture in Mexico.

Caption + ADDS IDENTITY OF WOMAN IN FOREGROUND – Tonya Couch, left, attends an extradition hearing, as one of her attorneys, Sonia Perez-Chaisson, is seen in the foreground, at Los Angeles Superior Court, in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016.

Ethan Couch is still being held in Mexico City.

In mid-December, a warrant was issued for Couch, who’s now 18 years old, to be taken into custody after his probation officer couldn’t reach him.

Texas prosecutors believe the mother and son fled the state after a video surfaced that appears to show Ethan at a party where people were drinking.

Do you think Tonya Couch did nothing wrong in fleeing the country with her son? It is up to Texas law enforcement officials to transport her from Los Angeles to Fort Worth.

“Well we had a chance to confer but I am not at liberty to disclose about what we talked about, I am so sorry”, Fernando Benitez told media outside a Mexican immigration detention facility.

He has declined to say whether Couch would drop an appeal that produced a stay of his deportation back to the United States.

She is expected to waive extradition at a hearing Tuesday morning in Los Angeles.

The Couches had filed an injunction to delay their extradition and a judge in Mexico would have up to 72 hours to consider the injunction, they said.

Benitez says his client is “fine and “everything’s OK”. Benitez said he was hired to represent Ethan in Mexico, but didn’t say who hired him. Couch, while evading arrest with his mother in Mexico, visited strip clubs and, when he couldn’t settle his bill, had to have his mother pay.