More from The Appeal:
Outside of the traditional foster care system exists a shadow system of potentially hundreds of thousands of children removed by CPS to their relatives or family friends—without a court case, monetary support, or due process.
Roxanna Asgarian Dec 21, 2020
Incumbents Jimmy Flannigan and Alison Alter have been targeted by conservative challengers because of the council’s votes to cut police funding and repeal a ban on public camping.
Meg O'Connor Dec 01, 2020
None of the Austin City Council members who voted to cut police funding lost their elections, but a police union vice president who fearmongered about the defund movement did.
Meg O'Connor Nov 20, 2020
Houston area voters re-elected Gonzalez after he supported bail reform, cleaned up the county jail, and provided aid to incarcerated people living with opioid use disorder.
Jerry Iannelli Nov 04, 2020
Sanchez is running for one of the state House seats that Democrats are hoping to flip.
Meg O'Connor Nov 02, 2020
She is running for a historically Republican-controlled seat, and if she wins, it could help turn the state House blue.
Meg O'Connor Oct 30, 2020
If she’s successful in her bid to represent Texas’s 24th Congressional District, Valenzuela will flip the district to blue and become the first Black and Latinx member of Congress.
If Chambers can unseat the Republican incumbent in her district, she said she’ll prioritize expanding Medicaid, improving public education funding, and lowering property taxes.
Meg O'Connor Oct 29, 2020
‘Our Congress should be reflective of the people here, and it’s not,’ the Texas resident said.
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Oct 27, 2020
Fort Bend Sheriff Troy Nehls wants voters to send him to Congress despite his department’s history of jail deaths and allegations of racial-profiling.
Jerry Iannelli Oct 23, 2020
Efforts by elected leaders in several states are making it harder to get to the polls and fomenting misinformation about the election amid a pandemic.
Joshua Vaughn Oct 21, 2020
Last week’s problems in New York were part of a widespread series of issues, both systemic and targeted, that are only now becoming fully apparent, activists say.
Eoin Higgins Oct 08, 2020
While a debate over defunding the police rages in Austin, a new lawsuit reminds its residents that assault cases in the city are routinely ignored.
Jerry Iannelli Oct 02, 2020
In February 2019, police officers in Killeen shot James Scott Reed in his home. One officer entered a guilty plea to evidence tampering, but Reed’s family is still suing the city and several officers in federal court.
Jerry Iannelli Sep 04, 2020
The City Council will pass a budget this week that could cut nearly $150 million in funding from the Austin Police Department. The proposal appears to have majority support.
Meg O'Connor Aug 12, 2020
A deadly pandemic should not be used as a bargaining chip against poor, detained people charged with crimes.
Amanda Woog Aug 04, 2020
A new report finds that too many kids, particularly Black youth, continue to be held in dangerous juvenile detention facilities; California prison officials refused offers of free testing before and during San Quentin outbreak; and Gov. Gavin Newsom announces plans to release 8,000 incarcerated people.
Kelly Davis Jul 10, 2020
Prioritizing bar examiners’ gatekeeping function during a pandemic and economic crisis means putting aspiring lawyers at risk and making it harder for nonwhite and low-income people to enter the legal profession.
Videos contradict officers’ claims that they didn’t ‘kettle’ protesters.
Jerry Iannelli Jun 12, 2020
Attorneys argued for decades that Bobby Moore was intellectually disabled when he was sentenced to death in 1980. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling led to a change in his sentence last year and cleared the way for his release.
Lauren Gill Jun 09, 2020
Harris, now 72 and blind, had been serving a life sentence for the shooting death of her husband, a man she said had abused her for years. Last month, the Arkansas Parole Board agreed to free her.
Lauren Gill Jun 05, 2020
Texas’s governor has proclaimed that ‘safe practices save lives,’ but prisoners say that advice can’t be followed in the state’s prisons, where unsanitary conditions have left the novel coronavirus ‘spreading vigorously.’
Tana Ganeva Jun 01, 2020
An Erie County judge said the pregnant 20-year-old would be ‘safer’ in jail from the COVID-19 outbreak.
Victoria Law May 11, 2020
Andrea Circle Bear was confined within FMC Carswell while suffering from the novel coronavirus. ‘She was serving a 26-month sentence that ended up being a death penalty,’ one maternity specialist said.
Tana Ganeva May 06, 2020
Attorneys say the prosecution’s theory of the murder case was ‘concocted out of whole cloth’ and based on ‘outdated racial stereotyping.’
Steven Hale Apr 29, 2020
A trio of cases in Wisconsin and Texas illustrates how Republican judges are feigning helplessness in the face of a public health crisis while furthering their own ends.
Jay Willis Apr 22, 2020
‘This is getting worse,’ one woman said. ‘People just want to sleep or fight. They play with our emotions constantly. This place is scary.’
Tana Ganeva Apr 21, 2020
Lawyers, judges, and advocates for migrant children wonder what it will take to close all 69 immigration courts. ‘I hope that it won’t take a death, but I worry that it will,’ one lawyer said.
Liz Robbins Apr 03, 2020
Conservative lawmakers are using emergency measures to restrict access to care.
Akilah Wise Apr 02, 2020
The ruling is a setback for the state's so-called junk science statute.
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Apr 01, 2020
Sheriffs wield enormous power, and they can direct it in ways that will help contain the spread of COVID-19 and protect incarcerated people.
Jessica Pishko Mar 18, 2020
John Hummel was scheduled to be executed on Wednesday. The court, citing the current health crisis, has postponed the execution for 60 days.
Lauren Gill Mar 16, 2020
The student, whose last name is Mohammed, was subject to improper searches based on little evidence, his attorney argues.
Roxanna Asgarian Mar 09, 2020
Sarah Lustbader Feb 27, 2020
Jones is challenging incumbent Kim Ogg in the 2020 election.
Jay Willis Feb 13, 2020
Advocates say junk science was used to convict Jimenez. DA Margaret Moore has not yet decided whether she will drop charges or retry her.
The move is made possible by a Texas law that legalized the production of hemp last year.
Jay Willis Jan 10, 2020
Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez of Texas told The Appeal about her vision for a complete overhaul of her state’s legal system.
Kira Lerner Jan 09, 2020
Guards at the Mark Stiles Unit in Beaumont are alleged to have led the victim to a hallway where there were no security cameras.
The incumbent in the race, Jones’s former boss Kim Ogg, will not support a blanket refusal to prosecute sex workers, her office says.
Kira Lerner Dec 11, 2019
The Austin-based labor and immigrant rights attorney, who has pledged to end money bail and nonviolent drug prosecutions, is looking to unseat incumbent District Attorney Margaret Moore.
Aaron Morrison Dec 06, 2019
Sarah Lustbader Nov 19, 2019
Last week, the City Council reinstated a “no camping” ordinance meant to discourage people experiencing homelessness from sleeping on sidewalks and outside a shelter. Advocates say the city is criminalizing poverty.
Aaron Morrison Oct 25, 2019
Rodney Reed, set to be executed on Nov. 20, is innocent of a rape and murder, his lawyers say, and untested evidence will prove it. But prosecutors have pushed back, arguing the evidence is contaminated.
Lauren Gill Sep 26, 2019
A series of victories for advocates reflects a shift in the ‘popular narrative’ around bail.
Kim Ogg ran as a reform-minded district attorney candidate, but her office has sought two death warrants for Dexter Johnson, whose lawyer says cannot name everyday objects and has an IQ of 70.
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Sep 10, 2019
The family of Ricardo Treviño, an unarmed 21-year-old killed by police last year, says they’ve spent months waiting for answers on why he was shot.
Aaron Morrison Aug 07, 2019
In California, Texas and Florida, advocates sent letters to district attorneys, demanding that they refuse to work with officers with histories of misconduct.
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Jul 29, 2019
Records show Kim Ogg’s office appeared to misrepresent felony prosecutor caseloads in its $21 million budget request.
Keri Blakinger Jun 10, 2019
Tina Rodriguez was sent to prison in Texas for allegedly starving her son to death. But recent discoveries about the medical examiner who conducted the baby’s autopsy raise questions about her case.
Debbie Nathan Apr 22, 2019
In recent years, the number of people federally charged with smuggling and harboring has jumped nearly a third.
Debbie Nathan Apr 17, 2019
The legislation is part of a wave of bills across the country meant to criminalize mistakes in the name of voter fraud.
Kira Lerner Apr 12, 2019
In 2000, Lamar Burks was convicted of murder and given a 70-year sentence. But the federal indictment of a DEA agent and witnesses who say Burks is innocent have raised new questions about his case.
Mike Hayes Apr 03, 2019
Patrick Murphy didn’t even learn about the murder until later that day. A controversial law allows him to be executed anyway.
Katie Rose Quandt Mar 28, 2019
In the deep blue home of Beto O’Rourke, attorneys and advocates are questioning the county’s multi-million-dollar contract to detain migrants and refugees.
Debbie Nathan Mar 20, 2019
The Bureau of Prisons’ South Central regional director utilized incarcerated people from a Texas prison to work on a landscaping project at his church.
Lauren Gill Mar 12, 2019
Audia Jones pledges to tackle ‘brokenness in the system’ by unseating Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg.
Roxanna Asgarian Mar 07, 2019
New bills would expand access to medical marijuana, but the state's sheriffs' association promises to fight even such modest legislation.
Michael Arria Mar 04, 2019
Defense attorneys say they were unaware of the practice and are unclear on how they can expunge the data of nonconvicted clients.
The technology also allows authorities to mine call databases and cross-reference the voices of individuals prisoners have spoken with.
Migrants near Brownsville, Texas say that if they don't bribe Mexican officials they're stuck at the bottom of a list of people seeking refuge in the U.S. via international bridges.
Debbie Nathan Jan 25, 2019
As they wait for permission to cross into the U.S., migrants, including children and infants, sleep on concrete and under plastic tarps, exposing them to cold, wind, rain, and illness.
Debbie Nathan Jan 17, 2019
Prosecutors denounce bail reform efforts when people miss court dates, but ‘failure to appear’ rates obscure the fact that many who miss court aren’t on the run.
SB 4 encourages officers to ask for the status of anyone they detain.
Debbie Nathan Dec 10, 2018
Even though it’s unlikely that they commit sexual assault at higher rates than other ethnic or racial groups, nearly one of every 100 Black men is on a sex offender registry, a rate double that of white men.
Debbie Nathan Nov 15, 2018
In Travis County, detectives refused training that would have helped them interview victims of trauma.
Kira Lerner Nov 09, 2018
In response, a new ‘Freedom Cities’ movement is rising to defend immigrants’ rights.
Opposition to Operation Stonegarden, however, is spreading; one Arizona county just rejected over $1 million of its funds.
Debbie Nathan Oct 22, 2018
A Texas jail suicide involving a woman who couldn’t make bail in a shoplifting case highlights of the plight of pretrial detainees with mental illness.
Lauren Gill Oct 12, 2018
With Dominique Walker of the ACLU, Reverend Edwin Robinson of Faith in Texas, and Joe Estelle of Texas Organizing Project.
Adam H. Johnson Sep 20, 2018
Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson prosecuted Crystal Mason for casting an illegal ballot. But Wilson escaped charges for a possible election violation of her own.
Steven Yoder Sep 18, 2018
A community group met with the Bastrop County sheriff in an effort to build trust between the sheriff’s office and the immigrant community. Then, the sheriff ran a sting that led to more than one dozen arrestees being handed over to ICE.
Michael Arria Jul 31, 2018
Lawrence Parrish faces charges including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and remains jailed on $500,000 bond even though the Austin police admitted he never shot at them.
Michael Arria Jul 02, 2018
Faith Johnson’s recent indictment of a Mesquite police officer for shooting an innocent man follows years of work by community activists.
Rebecca McCray Dec 21, 2017
Former business partner of Nico LaHood will run against him after LaHood threatened to shut down his law practice
Larry Hannan Nov 06, 2017
Court watchers believe Justices will side with plaintiff
Larry Hannan Nov 04, 2017