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Texas Appeals Court Maintains Execution Stay
A Henderson County court will be asked to determine if an inmate on death row for a 2007 double murder is mentally competent enough to legally be executed.The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals continued...
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Sandra Bland, Jail Standards Top Criminal Justice News in 2015
*Correction appendedOn July 10, Illinois resident Sandra Bland was pulled over in Prairie View by a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper for failing to signal a lane change. The encounter soon...
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Grand Jury to Reconvene Over Sandra Bland Case
A Waller County grand jury will meet again Wednesday to continue considering charges in connection with the arrest and death of Sandra Bland.Bland, a black woman from Illinois, was found hanged in a...
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Texas Conducts First Execution of the Year
Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect the execution.In Texas' first execution of 2016, a man convicted in a fatal strangling and robbery was executed in Huntsville Wednesday...
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Man Who Killed Texas Game Warden Executed
Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect the execution.A man convicted in the 2007 shooting death of a Texas game warden in Wharton County was executed Wednesday evening.James Garrett...
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Faces of Death Row App Gets an Update
Mark Anthony Gonzalez arrived on death row last week after being convicted in the shooting death of Bexar County Sheriff Sgt. Kenneth Vann. With his arrival and the executions of Richard Masterson and...
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Inmate Executed after 24 Years on Death Row
Editor's note: This story has been updated throughout.HUNTSVILLE — After 24 years on Texas death row, a re-sentencing trial and an unsuccessful escape attempt, Gustavo Julian Garcia was executed...
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18 Texas Correctional Officers Disciplined in Inmate Death
Editor's note: This story has been updated.Texas prison officials have recommended the firing of a supervisor at the Clements Unit and disciplinary actions against 17 others for failing to conduct...
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Less Than 5 Percent of Texas Prison Inmates are Undocumented
The Texas Tribune is taking a yearlong look at the issues of border security and immigration, reporting on the reality and rhetoric around these topics. Sign up to get story alerts.About 4.6 percent of...
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Texas Executes Man Courts Recognized as Mentally Ill
Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect the execution.HUNTSVILLE — Adam Kelly Ward, whom appeals courts had recognized as mentally ill, was executed Tuesday evening for a 2005 shooting...
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Execution Stayed for Dallas Accountant Who Gunned Down Daughters
Editor's note: This story has been updated with the news that John Battaglia's execution has been stayed.On a May evening in 2001, a Dallas accountant shot and killed his two daughters, 6-year-old...
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Killer Executed in 12-Year-Old Boy's Death
Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect the execution.Twelve-year-old David Cardenas was still alive when his killer drank the blood from his wounds, according to a videotaped confession...
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New Prison Rule Means Jailbirds Can't Tweet
Texas prison inmates shouldn't be allowed to have active social media accounts, even if friends or family on the outside actually run them, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has decided. Earlier...
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FDA Blocks Texas Import of Execution Drug
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has told the Texas Department of Criminal Justice it is tentatively barred from importing a drug used in executions, according to department spokesman Jason Clark....
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Petition Seeks Ban on Sex Offender Pen Pals
BEAUMONT — Lori Williams was searching online last year when she found a plea apparently written by a Texas inmate looking for pen pals to write him in prison. The accompanying photo was of the man who...
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Texas Prison Inmate Database Updated
The Texas prison inmates database has been updated with the latest data from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Use the app to learn more about the most common crimes and look up any of the more...
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Appeals Court: Texas Restrictions on Inmates' Beards Violates Federal Law
A New Orleans-based appeals court says the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's restrictions on beard lengths and religious head garments for inmates violate federal law.Muslim inmate David Rasheed...
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State, Lawyers Debate Identifying Execution Drug Supplier
Revealing Texas' supplier of execution drugs could have a harmful effect on the provider and as a result leave the state empty-handed, a lawyer for the state suggested Wednesday during an appeals court...
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A Peek at a Forgotten Age of Prison Radio in Texas
In 1938, as the Great Depression was winding down, a Texas radio station began airing “Thirty Minutes Behind the Walls,” a variety show broadcast every Wednesday night from the state prison in...
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Advocates Push For Early Release of Severely Ill Sex Offenders
Charles Dill spent 14 years in prison after being convicted of indecency with a child in Collin County. His wife, Helga, recalls how he suffered from heart problems behind bars and had several...
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