Dear Friends, I am thrilled to share Texas Defender Service’s latest report, An Extreme Outlier: Race and the Death Penalty in Tarrant County, the Third Largest County in Texas. Even compared to the rest of Texas, historically the death penalty capital of the United States, Tarrant County is an extreme outlier, pursuing capital punishment almost exclusively against […]
Dear Friends, We are excited to announce that Texas Defender Service, in partnership with Lioness Justice Impacted Women’s Alliance and the University of Texas School of Law Mithoff Pro Bono Program, is teaching a parole self-advocacy workshop to women incarcerated in a Texas prison. Ten women incarcerated at the Coleman facility are now learning how to better advocate for themselves […]
Dear Friends, Please save the date for Texas Defender Service’s 2026 Light of Justice Luncheon, featuring the Pulitzer-Prize winning author Lawrence Wright. This inspiring event will be held on October 22, 2026 from 12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. at the Four Seasons Hotel in Houston, Texas. Registration information will be shared soon! More About the Keynote Speaker, […]
Dear Friends, In recognition of Social Worker Appreciation Month, we want to take a moment to celebrate the incredible work of the social workers at Texas Defender Service. At TDS, our social workers are rooted in mitigation investigation—an approach that centers the full humanity of the people we serve. Through comprehensive life history investigations, they uncover and […]
Dear Friends, On April 17, 2026, we will be hosting an important in-person legal training in partnership with the University of Texas School of Law: From Voir Dire to Sentencing: Constructing the Capital Defense Narrative. This program will bring together attorneys and advocates to focus on strengthening representation in death penalty cases. Trainings like this are an […]
Dear Friends, In newly filed amicus curiae briefs, a broad coalition of experts, advocates, and exonerees is urging the United States Supreme Court to review the case of Charles Flores, a man on Texas’s death row whose conviction relied heavily on an eyewitness identification shaped by investigative hypnosis-a technique now widely discredited by modern science. Mr. Flores’s petition for writ […]
