FORT WORTH — In deposition tapes obtained by ABC News 20/20, the mother of Ethan Couch — the Tarrant County teen who was convicted on four counts of vehicular manslaughter following a 2013 drunk driving crash — described her parenting practices to attorneys.
"Do you recall ever disciplining Ethan for anything?" they asked Tonya Couch.
"Sometimes I would take little things away from him, or we would just discuss the problems," she replied.
"When is the last time you recall disciplining Ethan for anything?" an attorney then asked.
"I don't remember," she said.
At a Tuesday news conference, one day after the two were apprehended at a Mexican hideaway, Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson addressed the way Ethan's mother handled his upbringing.
"Her entire focus has been on protecting Ethan," he said. "Her entire focus has been on making sure he didn't see any justice done, making sure he was not accountable."
The irony now is that it's Tonya Couch — not Ethan — who could soon be spending significant time behind bars.
"We have now had an arrest warrant issued for Tonya Couch for hindering an apprehension," the sheriff said.
"That is a 3rd degree felony in Texas," explained Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson. "It carries a range of punishment of two to 10 years in the penitentiary."
Tonya Couch's daughter-in-law told WFAA her family does not plan to talk to the media about the situation.
Authorities are charging Tonya Couch after they believe she helped her son Ethan run away to Mexico. They realized he was gone earlier this month when he missed a probation meeting.
Ethan has been serving 10 years' probation in juvenile court for killing four people in a drunken driving wreck in 2013. Even though he violated probation, he may only face a few months behind bars.
"We're still bound by the original sentence," Wilson said.
But the district attorney hopes to transfer his case to adult court, which could land him additional jail time.
"The best result in this case is to get him, in our opinion, into adult court," she said.
As for Tonya Couch, Wilson said she deserves to be incarcerated, and she will push for 10 times the normal bail amount of $15,000. They would be the consequences for a mother who admitted to giving her son very few.
