The Exonerated
Thirty-seven men, 525 years behind bars for crimes they didn’t commit. Thanks to DNA testing, their claims of innocence have finally been proved—but what happens to them now?
Thirty-seven men, 525 years behind bars for crimes they didn’t commit. Thanks to DNA testing, their claims of innocence have finally been proved—but what happens to them now?
Ernest Willis spent seventeen years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. And he has a few things to say about the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 for a strangely similar crime that many experts believe he didn’t commit either.
Michael Hall’s exclusive interview with Ernest Willis.
Pamela Colloff talks about reporting on an eighteen-year-old murder case and interviewing Anthony Graves, who was sent to death row for the crime.
If it’s something you’d just as soon not think about, chances are Pamela Colloff has written about it for TEXAS MONTHLY. Here is a partial list of the subjects she’s covered since coming to work at the magazine thirteen years ago: murder, arson, abortion, heroin addiction, hate crimes, illegal immigration,
Freedom for Earnest Willis?
Clyde Wilson is more than a private investigator. He’s the historian of Houston’s dark side—and that makes him the most dangerous man in town.
The short, slight, mentally disabled black man was found on the side of a road in Linden, huddled in a fetal position. He was bloody and unconscious—the victim of a violent crime. But another tragedy was how residents of the East Texas town reacted.
An exclusive peek at the trailer for The Last 40 Miles, an animation about heading to the death chamber.
Michael Morton spent 25 years wrongfully imprisoned for the brutal murder of his wife. How did it happen? And who is to blame?
The National Magazine Award–winning story about Michael Morton, a man who came home from work one day in 1986 to find that his wife had been brutally murdered. What happened next was one of the most profound miscarriages of justice in Texas history.
Brian DeAngelis stepped down from his post as Texas A&M-Kingsville's athletic director after he was accused of taking photos up a teen's skirt at Walmart.
A Florida man was sentenced to nine months in federal prison Thursday for catching alligator gar in the Trinity River and exporting the fish to Japan.
Todd Trotter is trying to make a film about Richard LaFuente, who has served 26 years in prison for a crime he says he did not commit.
Some 31 female trainees have accused twelve instructors of sexual misconduct.
Courtney Royal had sued to practice his vampiric religious beliefs behind bars but the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals was unswayed by his arguments.
A full 3,888 days after Hank Skinner first asked for testing of the DNA in the murder case that sent him to death row, the Texas Attorney General's Office finally relented.
UPDATE: Judge Lanny Moriarty has vacated Diane Tran's conviction. The Willis High School junior has repeatedly missed school because she also works two jobs.
The Columbia University Human Rights Law Review published a 400-page investigative article that alleges that in 1989, Texas executed the wrong man for a 1983 murder.
Kerry Max Cook's attorneys claim A.D. Clark III, a former Smith County district attorney, kept a blood-soaked knife at his home, an allegation Clark denies.
The Supreme Court rejected the ex-Enron CEO's latest appeal, a move that is hardly surprising to most Houstonians.
What did Kerry Max Cook actually win on Monday, when he was granted his request for DNA testing? Not a lot, most likely.
Fifteen years after being released from death row, Kerry Max Cook is still looking for freedom.
Ernie Lopez, who was convicted of sexually assaulting a baby and became the focus of a ProPublica investigation into mishandled child death cases, was released from prison after the state appeals court overturned his conviction.
Guards had been aware that the Liberty County jail inmates were viewing porn for months, according to a KPRC News investigation.
Tyler's paper of record just published an article about former death row inmate Kerry Max Cook. Let me tell you the rest of the story.
The Court of Criminal Appeals examined the case of Richard Miles, applied common sense and legal logic, and determined that he was innocent.
The Court of Criminal Appeals ordered a lower court to examine claims of innocence by the Corpus Christi mother of five, who was charged with capital murder nearly six years ago.
On October 3, 2006, a four-year-old boy named Andrew Burd died in a Corpus Christi hospital. The cause of death was determined to be salt poisoning, an extremely unusual occurrence. Even more shocking was what happened next: his foster mother, Hannah Overton, was found guilty of killing him. But could
In 1982 a man named Wayne East was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of one of Abilene’s most prominent citizens. To this day, he maintains his innocence. And one member of the victim’s family believes him.
Larry Swearingen has ten scientists and doctors who say he isn't a killer. He also has a new execution date.
The “Mineola Swingers Club” cases come to a disgraceful end.
For eighteen years Anthony Graves insisted that he had nothing to do with the gruesome murder of a family in Somerville. That’s exactly how long it took for justice to finally be served.
Anthony Graves has spent the past eighteen years behind bars—twelve of them on death row—for a grisly 1992 murder. There was no plausible motive nor any physical evidence to connect him to the crime, and the only witness against him repeatedly recanted his testimony. Yet he remains locked up. Did
The wheels of justice (or injustice) continue to turn in the shockingly bizarre Mineola swingers club case.
Another defendant in the Mineola child sex ring crimes is found guilty.
New trials for two of the Mineola Swinger's Club defendants.
The Mineola child sex ring scandal keeps getting weirder.
The Texas attorney general takes a second look at the Mineola child sex ring cases.
Investigators and social workers in the Mineola Swingers Club cases have admitted that there was plenty of evidence that never made it into the first three trials that resulted in three life sentences. Will it make a difference?
When adults are accused of unthinkable crimes against children, what’s fact and what’s fiction can get lost in translation.
Was the quaint East Texas town of Mineola home to a horrific child sex ring? Were the three people sent to prison last year for running it guilty? Was justice served? Depends on which district attorney you ask.
Bonnie Haldeman, the mother of David Koresh, dies at 64.
A criminal justice reform activist in Texas on overcrowded prisons, Tulia, the Texas Youth Commission, and the criminalization of mental illness.
Sharon Keller must go!
Nearly two centuries after their forebears protected colonists from Indian raids, the Texas Rangers are alive and well and wrestling with the realities of the twenty-first century. In their own words, the iconic crime fighters explain how their world has changed—and what it takes to battle the latest generation of
At the Giddings State School, violent teenagers come to terms with their horrific crimes—and learn how to avoid committing them again—through role-playing exercises in a jailhouse version of group therapy. This is what your tax dollars are paying for? Well, it works. For a while, at least.
Whatever else you can say about it, the life and death of Bellaire High School junior Jonathan Finkelman is a tragic tale of drugs, money, race, and MySpace.
No one in McAllen saw Irene Garza leave Sacred Heart that night in 1960. The next morning, her car was still parked down the street from the church. She never came home.
Greg Ott, the philosophy graduate student who was convicted of killing a Texas Ranger in 1978, has finally been released and is getting on with his life.