Texas

The legislation is part of a wave of bills across the country meant to criminalize mistakes in the name of voter fraud.

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.

Patrick Murphy didn’t even learn about the murder until later that day. A controversial law allows him to be executed anyway.

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.

The Bureau of Prisons’ South Central regional director utilized incarcerated people from a Texas prison to work on a landscaping project at his church.

Audia Jones pledges to tackle ‘brokenness in the system’ by unseating Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg.

New bills would expand access to medical marijuana, but the state’s sheriffs’ association promises to fight even such modest legislation.

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.

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.

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.

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.  

In Travis County, detectives refused training that would have helped them interview victims of trauma.

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.

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.

With Dominique Walker of the ACLU, Reverend Edwin Robinson of Faith in Texas, and Joe Estelle of Texas Organizing Project.

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.

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.

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.

In February 2017, Mweze Kyungu was pulled over by Houston police officers in Harris County, Texas for a defective brake light and then arrested. “You kill people like me,” Kyungu told the arresting officers, “all you do is kill black people.” Thus began a nearly year-long ordeal for Kyungu in Harris County’s criminal justice system, […]

When Steven Shockey was arrested at a San Diego port of entry in December 2011, he knew his luck had run out. The 52-year-old was trying to re-enter the United States after jumping bail and fleeing to Mexico because of an arrest in Williamson County, Texas, for the aggravated assault of his ex-wife. Because of […]

Half the challengers to Texas’s sitting district attorneys were successful earlier this month in what criminal justice reformers are calling a promising sign that their message is working. Seven out of 13 incumbent DAs, a mix of Democrats and Republicans, lost their primaries. The Texas District and County Attorneys Association (TDCAA) argues this turnover reflects typical political fluctuations rather than […]

A Texas man tried and convicted in late February of murdering his girlfriend’s daughter is the state’s first death sentence in 2018 — but it also may be its latest example of prosecutorial misconduct in a capital case. On February 28, a jury in Hardin County, a small East Texas county near the Louisiana border, handed down a […]

He’s a death-penalty championing, Islam-bashing vaccine skeptic who believes the U.S. is “rooted in Christian principles.” And he’s currently campaigning for re-election in Texas as the district attorney of Bexar County, a populous county of nearly two million residents, close to 60 percent of whom are Hispanic — as a Democrat.

For five days, 47-year-old Shannon Daves sat in solitary confinement in a Dallas County jail because she couldn’t afford to pay $500 bail. Daves, who is unemployed and homeless, was isolated because she is transgender — allegedly to protect her from the jail’s general population. She faces a misdemeanor property theft charge. She and five other indigent plaintiffs are […]

Faith Johnson’s recent indictment of a Mesquite police officer for shooting an innocent man follows years of work by community activists.

Former business partner of Nico LaHood will run against him after LaHood threatened to shut down his law practice

Court watchers believe Justices will side with plaintiff

A 14-year-old Houston teenager may be a registered sex offender for the rest of his life after he was charged with having sex with his 12-year-old girlfriend. The seventh grader, whose name has not been revealed, has been charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child. His girlfriend is in the sixth grade, the Houston Chronicle said. […]

Williamson County District Attorney Shawn Dick says the criminal justice system failed in the prosecution of Greg Kelley. Kelley was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for the sexual assault of a 4-year-old child in 2014. But the conviction was thrown into doubt when Kelley’s defense team found that another man, who used to be […]

Two Houston police officers who were accused of going too far with a roadside body cavity search after they thought they smelled weed on Charnesia Corley in 2015 have been cleared by a Harris County grand jury. Deputies William Strong and Ronaldine Pierre were originally indicted in June 2016 after pulling Charnesia Corley over for a traffic […]

Last Wednesday, County District Attorney Kristen Barnebey of Aransas County, Texas announced that her office will not accept cases presented by a local police department until its officers are better educated and trained. A press release issued by her office on Tuesday states that the Rockport Police Department has withheld evidence in violation of the law — […]

Fort Bend County District Attorney John Healey will be departing at the end of his term in 2018, ending a 26 year tenure as the elected prosecutor for Texas’ 10th largest county. Healey, a Republican, was originally appointed to office in 1992 and has been reelected six times. He faced a general election challenger only once; in […]

The office of Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson has suspended Leah Lucius, an assistant district attorney, after she was arrested on suspicion of driving drunk. Lucius, who has has been working with the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office since July of 2015, apparently made her situation even worse by asking the arresting officer “for […]

Bexar County District Attorney Nico LaHood is refusing to talk to the San Antonio Express-News and is blocking them from attending press conferences that he holds. The Express-News is the fourth-largest daily newspaper in the state of Texas in terms of circulation and a leading news source for South Texas. Bexar County is the seventh-most populous county […]