Texas Executes Fourteenth Man of 2012
Ramon Hernandez, put to death for a 2001 slaying, was also linked to three other murders, prosecutors said.
A native of Houston and a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, Sonia Smith is a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly. She cut her teeth reporting on crime on the bayou for the Baton Rouge Advocate. She has also written for Slate, The New York Times Magazine, Roads & Kingdoms, and the Kyiv Post, and was a finalist for the 2008 Livingston Awards for Young Journalists for her reporting on sexual abuse at the Louisiana School for the Deaf. Her Texas Monthly profile of leading climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe was included in the anthology The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2017.
Ramon Hernandez, put to death for a 2001 slaying, was also linked to three other murders, prosecutors said.
By Sonia Smith
A petition calling for the Obama administration to let Texas secede from the United States had more than 95,000 signatures as of Wednesday morning.
By Sonia Smith
Real talk from some prominent Republican women.
By Sonia Smith
Here are some of the different ways Texans are expressing their discontent with the reelection of President Barack Obama.
By Sonia Smith
One year ago today, Rick Perry gave the nation the most 53 excruciating seconds in presidential debate history.
By Sonia Smith
But how did the critically endangered sea turtle end up in the Netherlands in the first place?
By Sonia Smith
Our favorite recent items from the Lufkin Daily News's police blotter.
By Sonia Smith
The law requiring Texas voters to present photo ID at the polls is currently held up in court. Here's a list of all the different forms of identification you can use to vote.
By Sonia Smith
A full 250 executions—more than half that the state has performed since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976—have occurred on Rick Perry's watch.
By Sonia Smith
Donnie Lee Roberts, 41, was put to death for the 2003 slaying of his girlfriend in their Lake Livingston home. He was the twelfth man executed by Texas this year.
By Sonia Smith
Two lawsuits filed against the wealthy creater of the Cadillac Ranch allege that Marsh forced teenagers to perform various sexual acts.
By Sonia Smith
Connie Britton took to the pages of USA Today to criticize the Romney campaign for using the Friday Night Lights slogan "clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose."
By Sonia Smith
Laura Bush stumped for Mitt Romney in Michigan over the weekend, but the legacy of her husband still looms large over the Republican party.
By Sonia Smith
Texas put Bobby Lee Hines to death Wednesday for the 1991 slaying of Michelle Haupt inside her Carrollton apartment.
By Sonia Smith
The Texas Attorney General on Tuesday sent a strongly-worded letter to the OSCE, an international organization that has observed U.S. elections for the last decade.
By Sonia Smith
...guess who would win.
By Sonia Smith
The Texas governor swung through two swing states on Sunday and Monday to stump for his former rival in the waning days of the presidential campaign.
By Sonia Smith
Arlington resident Michael Brutsch, who was unmasked as Reddit's biggest troll late last week, took to CNN Thursday to issue a half-hearted apology.
By Sonia Smith
A new profile in Mother Jones describes how Ted Cruz's conservative beliefs were forged in a Houston after-school program.
By Sonia Smith
Chubby? Single? Maybe you should try moving to Carrollton or Spring, as these suburbs of Dallas and Houston landed on a dating site's list of the "Top 10 Cities for Big & Beautiful Boomers."
By Sonia Smith
A Pflugerville man learns you that if it dies on your property it isn't free to eat.
By Sonia Smith
Ten photos from the 11th Annual Austin City Limits Festival.
By Sonia Smith
Nelly's bodyguard was arrested after he admitted the ten pounds of weed and 36 baggies of marijuana on the bus belonged to him.
By Sonia Smith
The outcome of the case could bar affirmative action from use in college admissions.
By Sonia Smith
Someone scrawled "Obama" in uppercase letters over the green highway sign that marks the location of the unincorporated community located southwest of Fort Worth.
By Sonia Smith
Dallas-based photographer Allison V. Smith took over Texas Monthly's Instagram account during her trip to Marfa this weekend. Here are some highlights from her trip.
By Sonia Smith
Our favorite recent items from the Lufkin Daily News police blotter.
By Sonia Smith
And San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro fired back, suggesting Annise Parker was just jealous.
By Sonia Smith
The couple is splitting after seven years of marriage.
By Sonia Smith
The Ponzi schemer's personal effects, brought in from his St. Croix residence, fill some 10,000 square feet of a warehouse.
By Sonia Smith
Thousands of bug carcasses are smelling up local businesses.
By Sonia Smith
The owners of Museum Tower took out a full-page ad in the Dallas Morning News Friday to (sort of) apologize that the new building is so shiny.
By Sonia Smith
The video, targeted at first responders and those who work in the service industry, instructs people on how to spot suicide bombers.
By Sonia Smith
The Tyler congressman took to the floor of the house to declare that President Barack Obama's Middle East policies have brought about the "massive beginning of a new Ottoman Empire."
By Sonia Smith
An exclusive preview of Balmorhea's song "Masollan," plus an interview with band co-founder Rob Lowe.
By Sonia Smith
Robert Wayne Harris, who was convicted of killing five people at a car wash in Irving, was executed by Texas after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to stay his execution.
By Sonia Smith
Nearly fifty Texas billionaires made the 2012 edition of Forbes's richest Americans list.
By Sonia Smith
Texans feted both presidential candidates Tuesday as Mitt Romney's campaign coped with the fallout from the candidate's latest blunder.
By Sonia Smith
File this under the "things that should never go missing" category.
By Sonia Smith
People part of the president's campaign email list received an invitation from the singer to spend an evening with her and the president—and to send in a campaign donation, natch.
By Sonia Smith
Beef Products, Inc. sued ABC News for defamation over the network's reporting on the company's lean finely textured beef product.
By Sonia Smith
A recent poll shows Romney has support from 55 percent of likely voters in Texas to Obama's 40 percent.
By Sonia Smith
But the company strangely failed to show the body that she's working to slim down.
By Sonia Smith
On September 12, 1962, John F. Kennedy explained why “we choose to go to the moon” to a crowd of 40,000 at Rice University.
By Sonia Smith
On August 30, the Texas Transporation Commission signed off on a 85 mph speed limit on the new stretch of Texas 130 between Mustang Ridge and Seguin.
By Sonia Smith
The president of Planned Parenthood and daughter of Texas Governor Ann Richards drew forty seconds of sustained applause when she mentioned her late mother.
By Sonia Smith
Julián Castro's speech at the Democratic National Convention brought on a wave of nostalgia about Ann Richards, the last Texan to grace that stage.
By Sonia Smith
Our favorite recent items from the Lufkin Daily News's police blotter.
By Sonia Smith
The Austin resident announced at a surprise press conference that this year's U.S. Open would be his last tournament.
By Sonia Smith
Visitors to the Fort Worth Zoo are cooing over the new baby one-horned rhinoceros born there on August 16.
By Sonia Smith