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Our History
Texas Defender Service is dedicated to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in Texas through direct representation, policy reform, and public education. For over a quarter century, we have fought for justice for the most disadvantaged people impacted by Texas's criminal-legal system.
Since 2018 alone, Texas Defender Service has saved 42 lives from execution or a death sentence. We have given voice to the humanity of our clients, their families, and their communities, and led transformative policy initiatives for people facing serious sentences, including creating a statewide public defender office, the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs, to represent capital defendants in their state habeas proceedings, and achieving passage of a law, among the first of its kind, to permit new trials for defendants whose convictions were premised on junk science. Texas Defender Service has argued and won five cases before the United States Supreme Court, and achieved countless victories for clients who faced serious punishments because of their mental illness, intellectual disability, or race.
Today, TDS represents people sentenced to mandatory life without parole as children, advocates for second chances for people seeking to return home on parole so they can be reunited with their communities, and champions the cases of people who are innocent and were wrongfully convicted. TDS leads important research and policy-reform efforts that expose the fundamental need to build a more humane, evidence-based legal system, including reports on Texas's disturbing shortcomings in freeing the innocent and racial bias in Harris County's use of the death penalty. In 2024, we launched our pro bono program to match deserving candidates seeking parole with pro bono attorneys to advocate for their return to their communities and families.
Our legal advocacy and research is frequently profiled in the New York Times, the Texas Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, the Houston Landing, Texas Monthly, the Associated Press, People magazine, and many other publications.