Maurice Chammah’s “Let the Lord Sort Them” is a searing history of the rise and fall of capital punishment.
Death penalty
A.P. Merillat helped send at least 15 people to death row. On Wednesday, Travis Runnels will become the third this year to be executed, even though a former prison official calls Merillat’s testimony “bullshit.”
The case, which has attracted huge amounts of attention, will go back to the trial court.
Rodney Reed has been on Texas’ death row for 21 years, but new evidence and witnesses have drawn national attention ahead of his upcoming execution date.
There’s something dishonest in the state’s bureaucratic approach to killing its own citizens.
The case of a man who slaughtered his family, then gouged out his eyes, will be reviewed Tuesday by an appellate court panel in New Orleans.
With the increased difficulty of maintaining a pentobarbital supply, Texas and Arizona are accused of importing an unapproved drug.
The personal life of the slain sheriff’s deputy is no one’s business, but it could be important to his alleged killer's defense.
Maybe it had something to do with the dissent written last week by Judge Tom Price, of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Yesterday, when we unveiled the cover of our July issue featuring Rick Perry, we also told you about “The Perry Report Card,” an upcoming magazine feature where, as the title suggests, we graded the tenure of the governor on eight areas of public policy. We invited you to weigh…
The State of Texas uses pentobarbital for lethal injections, a drug with a long and complicated history. But the question everyone wants answered remains: Is it a painless way to die?
That might not happen in Texas, but the risk should concern people who support capital punishment.
The state, the prisoners who face execution, the attorneys who represent them, and the courts have a lot to figure out, and not a lot of time to do it.
The state managed to find a new supply of Pentobarbital, the drug it uses to perform lethal injections, but officials aren't saying where it came from.
A small group of committed protesters show up to nearly every execution in Huntsville to exercise their civil rights in what has become a sort of ritual.
During my years as a district attorney, I have sought the death penalty. But does the state need to take a life to make a point?
Carl Henry Blue was put to death Thursday for setting an ex-girlfriend on fire.
The story from our March issue about the case of Andre Thomas is the fruit of an exciting collaboration with our pals at the Texas Tribune.
Andre Thomas is deeply mentally ill. He is also a vicious murderer. How should he be punished?
If there’s one thing Texans love more than saying y’all, it’s a good argument. Texas Monthly readers react to the Department of Criminal Justice’s use of “ya’ll” instead of “y’all.”
Texas executed 15 people in 2012 and sent only nine new inmates to death row.
Jonathan Green was put to death Wednesday for the 2000 murder of a 12-year-old girl, but his lawyers maintained until the end that their client was mentally ill and thus unsuitable for execution.
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.
Marvin Wilson, an inmate with an IQ of 61 and the reasoning skills of a grade school student, was the latest to die in the Huntsville death chamber.
Yokamon Hearn was also the first person in Texas to be executed with the new single-ingredient lethal formula, pentobarbital.
A shortage of pancuronium bromide forced the state to abandon the three-drug cocktail it has used to execute prisoners since 1982. But another drug has surfaced that will do the job.
Beunka Adams, who was pronounced dead on Thursday night at 6:25 p.m., participated in a deadly convenience store robbery in 2002.
Jesse Joe Hernandez, who was pronounced dead on Wednesday night at 6:18 p.m., had beaten a 10-month-old baby to death in 2001.
Texas plans to execute Keith Thurmond Wednesday night for the 2001 murders of his estranged wife and her new boyfriend.
Michael Hall’s exclusive interview with Ernest Willis.
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 system fail?
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,…
Why does the Texas Department of Criminal Justice want to block the release of information about its lethal drugs stock?
Fifteen years after being released from death row, Kerry Max Cook is still looking for freedom.
Rodrigo Hernandez, who was convicted of the rape and murder of Susan Verstegen, a 38-year-old single mother and Frito-Lay employee, is set to die.
The number of people Texas executes each year is steadily declining as public sentiment in America turns against the death penalty.
Larry Swearingen has ten scientists and doctors who say he isn't a killer. He also has a new execution date.
The girl wanted love, the men wanted money, and when they all got together it was murder.