Anthony Graves was wrongly convicted of murder at 26 years old. He spent the next 18 years on death row, appealing that conviction until his exoneration and release from prison in 2010. His story stands as a saga of injustice that can too easily occur in contemporary America.
The red-white-and-blue signs advertising Houston City Council and mayoral runs are everywhere in Houston as the November election date fast approaches. But when was the last time you saw someone asking you to register to vote in Texas?
Last week, the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition (TCJC) released a guide to positive youth and adult justice legislation that became law in Texas in 2019. The guide, which is organized by bill area, is free and available online at the TCJC website.
Within the last 12 months, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg’s office has sought execution dates for Dexter Johnson, despite evidence of his intellectual disability. Though the district court set two execution dates—both at the request of the DA’s office—federal courts have twice granted Johnson stays.
For five days, 47-year-old Shannon Daves sat in solitary confinement in a Dallas County jail because she couldn’t afford to pay $500 bail. Daves, who is unemployed and homeless, was isolated because she is transgender — allegedly to protect her from the jail’s general population.
Commissioners Court on Tuesday will discuss the fate of Harris County’s chief public defender amid allegations that he improperly used his office to help plaintiffs in a bail reform lawsuit against the county.
On July 21, Debora Ann Lyons walked into a Walmart in Houston and headed to the deli counter. There, she stuffed food into a beach bag and proceeded to the self-checkout register. But she did not pay for the items; instead, she walked to a nearby McDonald’s and ate them. When she was finished, she placed food scraps back into her beach bag and then returned to the Walmart.
The Dallas County district attorney, Faith Johnson, often reminds voters that she recently won a rare murder conviction against a white police officer who shot into a car full of teenagers, killing a black 15-year-old boy.
While the criminal justice reform movement gains momentum across the country, Arizona remains on the outside looking in. Even as more conservative states with a tradition of harsh justice reduce prison populations through smart reforms that target the root causes of crime, Arizona persists in the failed policies of mass incarceration, wasting resources to imprison low-level offenders.
Read the rest of this article from the Arizona Capitol Times.
When the judge set his bail at $3,000, Jonathan Broad*, 57, thought “All I want is to die free—not in jail.” Broad was arrested in March 2016 and convicted of “criminal possession of a controlled substance.” When he appeared before the judge shortly after his arrest, he was unemployed and living in a homeless shelter in New York City and suffered from congestive heart failure, diabetes, and asthma. He could not pay the bail.
