Dear Friends, We are pleased to share that the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles granted parole for our client Allen and he is now at home. Allen is a kind, gentle man of 69 years who poses no risk to anyone. A preacher at the Pack Unit, Allen wanted nothing more than to spend what […]
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 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, One of the hidden features of our criminal-legal system in Texas is its enormous impact on women. The number of women incarcerated in Texas has increased by 951% since 1980, at more than twice the rate of male incarceration. Texas incarcerates more women than any other state.Eighty percent of women incarcerated in Texas prisons are […]
Dear Friends, We wanted to pass along the thrilling news that House Bill 115— proposed legislation by Republican House Member David Cook that would reform Texas’s junk science law—passed the Texas House of Representatives this session by a huge margin. In our report An Unfulfilled Promise: Assessing the Efficacy of Article 11.073, published last year, we found that Texas’s […]
