I have just spoken to the umpteenth truck driver who was just misinformed by a municipal court that it is impossible to keep a speeding ticket from going on his driving record because he has a commercial driver's license. What this trucker was told by the court is only partially true and very misleading. The true part is that a municipal or justice of the peace court can't give a commercial driver any disposition (other than an acquittal) to keep a conviction off of his driving record in a speeding case. Under Texas law, if a person with a commercial driver's license gets a speeding ticket, a muni or JP court is prohibited from giving the driver a deferred disposition, which would keep the ticket from resulting in a conviction. So a lot of muni and JP courts tell truckers that their only two options are to plead guilty, and be convicted, or set the case for trial, and take their chances (while risking getting a worse punishment). What many of these courts don't tell truck drivers is that it is possible to transfer the case to another court that does have the power to grant a deferred disposition to someone with a commercial license.
In Texas, if you have a ticket in a muni or JP court, you have the right to appeal the case to a County Court-at-Law, a type of court that normally handles jail-time type cases. The aims of this appeal right are to make sure that everyone can have his case heard by a judge with a law license (many judges who sit in traffic courts have no legal training) and to let people bypass small-town kangaroo courts that seem to exist for the sole purpose of generating revenue for a locality. The statute that forbids deferred dispositions for commercial licenses is contained in the part of the Texas of Code of Criminal Procedure that deals with the power of municipal and justice courts. It does not apply to county courts-at-law. So county courts-at-law are still free to defer findings of guilt in traffic cases for commercial license holders, just as they would be in any other Class C misdemeanor case. If you are a truck driver, and you get a ticket, one of the first things you should consider doing is getting your case transferred out of muni or JP court. While transferring the case takes more time and effort, it might save you some points on your CDL.