Dear Friends, In the follow up from Sunday’s Super Bowl, I wanted to send award-winning sports podcaster Pablo Torre’s recent interview with Charles Flores, a man on Texas death row, in which Flores talks about his beloved Dallas Cowboys. Torre’s previous podcast about Flores, and how he has followed the Dallas Cowboys from solitary confinement (with some game-day […]
Dear Friends, Justice. Humanity. Hope. As we begin 2026, that’s what we are fighting for here at Texas Defender Service. Hope means that our client Lois, a victim of sex trafficking, will finally go home to heal from the trauma she experienced. Like many women caught in sex trafficking rings, Lois gave advice to another person being […]
Dear Supporters, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of a humane, just society included strong moral opposition to the death penalty. MLK Jr. was absolutely clear that capital punishment is unacceptable. A person of faith, Martin Luther King, Jr. said that “[c]apital punishment is against the better judgment of modern criminology and, above all, against the […]
Dear Friends, Texas is one of the major centers of mass incarceration in the world. We are grateful to PBS for doing a deep dive with us on The OpenMind’s episode Deep in the Heart of Texas. Together we explored the harms of mass incarceration, the problems with the Texas death penalty, the importance of second chances, and the […]
Dear Friends, In 1999, Austin Mayor Kirk Watson proclaimed victory when police arrested four young men for the horrific 1991 murders of four teenage girls in a North Austin yogurt shop. The city exhaled—believing justice had been done. But the truth was far more tragic: The real killer would remain unidentified for more than 25 years, […]
Dear Friends, Our Pro Bono Parole Network has already made a big impact—and we’re just getting started. In just the first year of our program, we and our pro bono partners have taken on the representation of 25 clients with sentences ranging from eight years to life imprisonment. Twelve of our clients have already been granted parole. […]
