A 41-year-old Kyle man who managed a Jack in the Box will spend the rest of his life behind bars after a Hays County judge stacked a fourth life sentence on top of three others for sex crimes committed against teenage employees. District Judge Alicia Key handed down the sentences on August 10, closing out a case that stretched back three years to Reginald Clifton's initial arrest.
Clifton was convicted following a six-day trial in June on four separate sex offenses involving teenage girls: aggravated sexual assault, attempted aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault, and sexual performance by a child, according to KEYE. Prosecutors said Clifton hired teenage female employees at the Kyle Jack in the Box location he managed and began a relationship with a 16-year-old employee before preying on other teenage workers after that relationship ended. The Hays County Criminal District Attorney's office confirmed on Friday that the indictment ultimately covered three distinct female victims who were 17 and 18 years old at the time Clifton assaulted them.
Prosecutors Ashley Indelicato and Shelby Griffin tried the case for Hays County. Griffin said the outcome sends a clear message about how the county will handle predatory conduct by people in positions of authority over young workers, stating that Hays County will not tolerate sexual predators, especially those with a violent criminal history who prey on vulnerable teens. Indelicato added that the verdicts told survivors they were heard and believed.
A Criminal History That Predates the Jack in the Box Job
Court records cited by the station show Clifton's rap sheet extends well beyond the Kyle case. He has prior convictions for assault, assault on a peace officer, retaliation, robbery, and aggravated robbery. In 2009, Clifton shot a man during an aggravated robbery and was sentenced to 16 years in prison for that offense, a history prosecutors pointed to during sentencing as evidence of an escalating pattern of violence.
Evidence introduced during the August punishment hearing also showed that Clifton committed domestic violence against two other women during the same period he was exploiting teenage employees, according to the Hays County District Attorney's office. Prosecutors said Clifton provided alcohol to teenage female employees both on and off the job, conduct that factored into the broader picture jurors and the judge weighed in determining punishment.
Why the Stacked Sentence Means He Won't Walk Free
Judge Key ordered three of the life sentences to run concurrently, then ordered the fourth life sentence to be stacked consecutively rather than served alongside the others. Under Texas Government Code § 508.150, when a judge orders felony sentences to run consecutively, an inmate must complete the required parole eligibility period on the first sentence before any time begins accruing toward parole eligibility on the stacked sentence.
For a life sentence tied to a first-degree violent or sexual offense such as aggravated sexual assault, Texas Government Code § 508.145(d) requires a mandatory 30 calendar years of flat time before an inmate becomes eligible even to be considered for parole, with no reduction allowed for good-conduct credit. Because Clifton's fourth sentence is stacked on top of the first three, that 30-year clock effectively has to run twice before parole consideration on the final count could even begin — a mechanism that all but guarantees he dies in custody.
Aggravated sexual assault is classified under Texas Penal Code § 22.021 as a first-degree felony carrying a punishment range of 5 to 99 years or life. Sexual performance by a child, meanwhile, is defined under Texas Penal Code § 43.25 to cover any minor under 18 and criminalizes inducing or employing a minor in sexual conduct — a charge that does not require physical contact to constitute a felony, underscoring how the law treats workplace exploitation of teenage staff as criminal even absent a physical assault.
Part of a Wider Pattern in Hays County
Clifton's case is the latest in a string of aggressive sex-crime prosecutions out of the Hays County Criminal District Attorney's office under Kelly Higgins. In September 2024, the office secured a 40-year sentence for a Kyle man convicted of continuous sexual abuse of minors. In June 2025, a separate trial in the county ended with a seven-year conviction after prosecutors introduced audio the victim had recorded in which the perpetrator admitted ignoring her explicit refusal. Earlier this year, prosecutors also secured a 30-year plea deal in a San Marcos child sex case just before it was set to go to trial.
Whether Clifton's employer, Jack in the Box, faces any internal review over how it vetted or supervised managers with access to teenage staff remains an open question; nothing in the court record or the DA's public statements addresses corporate oversight of the Kyle location. What is clear from the sentencing is that Hays County prosecutors intend to keep pursuing multi-count indictments against those who use positions of authority to target teenage victims, a pattern Griffin and Indelicato both pointed to in their remarks following the verdict.
