Dear Supporters, Texas has the largest prison population in the United States. Every month, the Lone Star State sends thousands of people to prison for excessive sentences that fail to serve any public safety purpose. Texas Defender Service was formed to provide vital legal advocacy for indigent people in Texas facing extreme sentences—advocacy that our State fails […]
Dear Supporters: We have two pieces of important news to share with you today. First, our client, Abraham Ahumada, has avoided a death sentence after incredible advocacy by TDS’s mitigation team. Abraham was arrested in 2021 and faced federal charges related to the transportation of undocumented migrants. In February 2023, after the TDS team’s careful […]
Dear Supporters: At Texas Defender Service, we represent people in Texas prisons facing excessive punishments. That work also requires facing our State’s history of racial terror and the long legacy of slavery. The imprint of slavery is apparent in all aspects of our criminal-legal system today. Four of the five people Texas executed so far […]
Dear Supporters, We have news to share: Our client, Kyle Phillips, is no longer facing the death penalty. Mr. Phillips was arrested in 2020 in Bexar County in connection with a robbery and murder. Our mitigation specialists investigated Mr. Phillips’s case and shared his life story with the District Attorney. And on […]
Dear Supporters, We need your help. The State of Texas has scheduled the execution of Andre Thomas, a man with schizophrenia living on Texas death row. Andre has such severe mental illness that he has gouged out both of his eyes. Andre “is one of the most mentally ill prisoners in Texas history,” according to his lawyer, […]
Dear Supporters, Our client Shelton Jones has received a life sentence. Shelton was sentenced to death in 1991 for the shooting death of a Houston Police officer; the officer was shot after stopping and frisking two Black men who were walking down the street at night (there was no articulable justification for the stop). Shelton […]
