Texas Defender Service’s New Executive Director

Dear Friends,

Today I have the pleasure of writing to you as Texas Defender Service’s new Executive Director. I am honored to take the helm at TDS and lead our incredible, vibrant team in our mission to build a fairer and more just criminal punishment system in Texas.

Against the odds, TDS has, since its founding in 1995, transformed the Lone Star State’s use of capital punishment. We drove down new death sentences to a trickle, reduced annual executions—from their startling peak of 40 in 2000—to only three last year, and won five victories at the United States Supreme Court. We reshaped law and policy, established a state-wide system for representing people facing death, and protected countless clients—many of them suffering from serious mental illness and intellectual disability—from execution. All the while, Texas Defender Service inspired hearts and minds in Texas and beyond, exposing how Texas’s brand of extreme punishment fails to serve public safety, devastates communities of color, and harms the poor, the mentally ill, and the intellectually disabled.

To borrow Cornell West’s words, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” Every day, our team infuses our punishment system, in ways small and large, with love—our love of humanity, our love of justice, and our belief in a future where our criminal punishment system makes our communities safer and is free from racial bias and needless cruelty.

TDS’s impact continues. Expect to hear more from me in the coming year about our ongoing victories and our vision for all that lies ahead.

Our victories are only possible because of you: our friends, partners, and supporters. Thank you. If you are not yet among those who contribute to TDS, please consider joining our supporters across Texas and the United States and making a donation. Let’s together continue the work of creating a criminal punishment system that is humane and just.

With Gratitude,

Burke Butler
Executive Director
Texas Defender Service

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“Texas Defender Service has inspired hearts and minds in Texas and beyond, exposing how Texas’s brand of extreme punishment fails to serve public safety, devastates communities of color, and harms the poor, the mentally ill, and the intellectually disabled.”