Articles tagged: Death Penalty
A Wrongful Execution in Texas Points to the Fallibility of the Death Penalty
A new documentary, The Phantom, explores the case of Carlos DeLuna and bolsters the disturbingly convincing case that Texas executed the wrong man.
After years studying errors in death penalty cases, Columbia University law professor James Liebman wondered whether he could prove someone had been executed fo...Read More
Mentally Ill and Sentenced to Death
After 45 years, Texas’ longest-serving death row inmate was resentenced last week due to a long history of severe mental illness. But state lawmakers this session again declined to ban the death penalty for people like him.
This article was produced through the NPR NextGen/Texas Observer Print Scholars program, a new collaboration designed to offer mentorship and hands-on traini...Read More
Exploring the Rise, Fall, and Lingering Trauma of the Death Penalty in Texas
In his new book, journalist Maurice Chammah ties Texas' embrace of capital punishment to the state's frontier mythos.
From the January/February 2021 issue. Dalton Coble didn’t know his grandfather particularly well, but stories of Billie Wayne Coble have cast a shadow over h...Read More
On Rodney Reed Case, Greg Abbott Gets a Political Reprieve
A last-minute court intervention relieved political pressure on the Texas governor, who was ultimately able to keep his capital punishment bona fides intact.
As Rodney Reed’s November 20 execution date drew closer, all eyes turned to Governor Greg Abbott. When new evidence surfaced casting doubt on Reed’s convict...Read More
Death Penalty Reform Bill Gets Watered Down to ‘Nothing’ Before Passing Senate
After passing the House, HB 1139, meant to reform how Texas decides whether a defendant is too intellectually disabled to execute, was significantly softened in Senate committee.
A House bill meant to reform Texas’ death penalty procedures for intellectually disabled defendants was amended in the Senate to the point that criminal justi...Read More
The Dissenter
Texas’ highest criminal court turned Elsa Alcala into one of the state’s most prominent death penalty critics.
Elsa Alcala began her legal career in the Harris County DA’s office, joining a prosecutorial machine famous for cranking out death sentences. Three decades la...Read More
A New Crime Novel Asks Tough Questions About Revenge and Redemption
Texas Innocence Network founder David Dow’s first foray into fiction explores the trauma of a wrongful conviction.
Prison may be society’s most blatant example of a backfire mission — achieving the opposite of its rehabilitative intent. Very few who are incarcerated come...Read More
The Tattooed Star of the ‘Progressive Prosecutor’ Movement Braces for His First Death Penalty Trial
Mark Gonzalez wants a jury to help him decide whether Nueces County should keep sending people to death row.
In mid-January 2017, a couple of days after Mark Gonzalez was sworn in as Nueces County’s new district attorney, a deputy prosecutor approached him to ask how...Read More
State-Sanctioned Secrecy Shields Texas’ Death Penalty Machine from Scrutiny
New revelations about the source of Texas’ execution drugs underscore the risks of capital punishment shrouded in secrecy.
Shortly before he died by lethal injection earlier this year, Anthony Shore, Houston’s infamous “tourniquet killer,” exclaimed that he felt a burning sens...Read More