Dear Friends, At Texas Defender Service, we save lives and reunite families. We lead with love, with creativity, and with passion for justice and for people. We make an incredible impact, but to continue that impact we need your support. Our Light of Justice Luncheon, which will be held this year on October 19, 2023 from […]
Dear Supporters: Texas Defender Service’s internship program nourishes the next generation of leaders in the movement to end mass incarceration. Every summer, interns join us from law and social-work schools around the country, bravely facing the Texas heat to contribute to our fight for justice Hannah Topelberg, an intern from the University of Texas School of […]
Dear Supporters: After years of vigorous advocacy by Texas Defender Service and a pro bono team from O’Melveny & Myers LLP, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled that our client Steven Long is constitutionally exempt from the death penalty because of his intellectual disability. Steven Long’s is one of the 39 lives we have […]
Dear Supporters, Yesterday our client, Ronald Burgos-Aviles, faced the prospect of the death penalty. Our team poured thousands of hours into Ronald’s case to tell the story of his life and why it was unjust for the State of Texas to kill him. The jury deliberated until midnight. In the end, all twelve jurors decided that […]
Dear Supporters, Yesterday, in Jones v. Hendrix, the United States Supreme Court made it even more difficult for innocent people to overturn their convictions and be freed from incarceration for crimes they did not commit. At Texas Defender Service, we know first-hand that the criminal-legal system makes mistakes. Many of our clients have compelling claims of innocence. Their […]
Dear Supporters, Next week we celebrate Juneteenth, the anniversary of the day when federal troops began to make freedom a reality for enslaved people in Texas. On June 19, 1865, federal troops in Galveston, Texas proclaimed that enslaved people in the Lone Star State had been freed by executive decree. Federal troops announced this more than two years after President […]
