Critics fear increased election prosecutions could intimidate voters and local election officials. Attorney General Ken Paxton has long sought more autonomy over election cases.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals did not clarify why it halted the execution of David Wood in its order granting the stay.

Former Bexar constable Michelle Barrientes Vela has been formally acquitted of criminal charges, after the state’s highest appeals court declined to review a lower court’s decision to overturn her convictions last year, sources told KSAT Wednesday.

The Cameron County judge also found the state relied on false testimony during her capital murder trial, according to court documents.

A Texas appeals court has ordered a new trial for a Jewish man on death row because of antisemitic bias by the judge in his case.

Three of the five judges who allowed Robert Roberson’s execution to proceed will be leaving the court after Paxton-backed primary challenges.

The American Academy of Pediatrics embraces the diagnosis, but courts have thrown out some cases, calling it “junk science.”

A Texas appeals court recently overturned Mason’s five-year prison sentence for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election while on supervised release for federal tax evasion.

A judge has recommended that the conviction and death sentence of Texas inmate Melissa Lucio should be overturned.

In a rare joint statement, the district attorney and the defense agreed that prosecutors withheld evidence that could point to a Rio Grande Valley woman’s innocence in the death of her toddler.

Mason gained national attention after she was convicted for voting while under supervised release for felony tax fraud. She said she didn’t know she was ineligible to vote.

Paxton’s securities fraud trial has been delayed for years by a number of pretrial disputes, including how much the special prosecutors should be paid.

Judge Andrea Beall ruled Tuesday that the prosecutors, Brian Wice and Kent Schaffer, are owed the $300-an-hour rate by the county that they were promised when they started on the case in 2015.

Reed, a Black man on death row for more than 25 years, has gained international support for his claims that he did not kill 19-year-old Stacey Stites, a white woman. Another appeal over DNA testing of evidence is still pending.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruling overturns lower-court decisions that had moved the case back to Collin County, where the suspended attorney general lives.

Robert Roberson was sentenced to death for killing his 2-year-old daughter. Experts have since backtracked on the science used in part to win his conviction.

Areli Escobar was sentenced to death in 2011 for an Austin murder, but even prosecutors now agree his conviction relied heavily on faulty DNA testing by the discredited Travis County crime lab.

The Court of Criminal Appeals scuttled nearly 450 cases, saying migrants arrested for trespassing in Kinney County can’t ask Austin judges to hear their appeals.

Three seats were up for election in the Texas Supreme Court, which handles civil cases, and three in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Democrats haven’t been elected to either court since the late 1990s.

Results include Texas Supreme Court, Court of Criminal Appeals, 3rd Court of Appeals, District Judges and Bexar County Court-at-law judges.

Texans will vote on three seats for the state’s highest criminal court in November. Here’s what the court does, who is running for office and what issues candidates are running on.

Mason said she didn’t know she was ineligible to vote when she cast a provisional ballot in 2016, but she was sentenced to five years in prison. Now, the Court of Criminal Appeals says an appellate court that affirmed her conviction must look again at the evidence of Mason’s intent.

A Texas appeals court on Monday delayed the execution of Melissa Lucio amid growing doubts about whether she fatally beat her 2-year-old daughter.

Acknowledging substantive questions about Lucio’s guilt and the fairness of her conviction, the appeals court blocked her Wednesday execution so the case can be further investigated.

Months after the problems became apparent, migrants are still being kept in prison in violation of state laws under Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security crackdown.

A Texas attorney general is a civil lawyer, mostly concerned with regulatory, tax and administrative law. But to listen to the candidates, you’d think the state’s top lawyer was some kind of cop.

Republicans from Gov. Greg Abbott on down are pressuring the all-GOP Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to reverse a December ruling that gutted the attorney general’s power to go after election cases on his own.

Doubts over Reed’s guilt in the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites have lingered for more than 20 years and gained international attention. But a judge decided against recommending a new trial.

Clinton Young was convicted in a 2001 Midland County murder in which he insists he was framed. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said he was denied the right to a fair trial and an impartial judge.

In 2018, a lower court ruled that a state law that prohibits posting someone’s intimate photos online without their permission violated the First Amendment. Wednesday's ruling overturns that decision.

A Houston man who had been convicted in a 2010 fatal stabbing but was later eliminated as the killer by DNA evidence has been declared innocent by Texas’ highest criminal court.

But Tarrant County prosecutors pressed forward with charges, arguing Mason’s case came down to intent. The all-Republican court’s decision to review Mason’s case is notable. The Court of Criminal Appeals isn’t required to review non-death penalty convictions, and it rarely grants requests to do so. Mason turned to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals late last year after a state appeals court panel affirmed the trial court’s judgement. In her petition to the court, Mason’s lawyers argued the appeals court erred in upholding her conviction because the state’s illegal voting statute requires a person to know they are ineligible to vote and Mason did not.

As law enforcement’s disparate use force against Black people continues to stoke division in a troubled nation, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals plans to review the high-profile murder conviction of former North Texas police officer Roy Oliver, who fatally shot an unarmed Black teenager. His appeal centers on whether the statements he made to internal affairs investigators were wrongly used against him in his criminal case. Now, Texas’ highest criminal court wants to take a look. On Wednesday, the judges took the rare step of granting a review of Oliver’s case. The Court of Criminal Appeals isn’t required to review non-death penalty convictions, like Oliver’s case.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Jan. 15, 2020. Credit: Miguel Gutierrez Jr./The Texas TribuneJesse McClure, a trial judge on a criminal court in Houston, will join the state’s highest court for criminal matters in the new year. Greg Abbott appointed McClure, a Republican, to the Court of Criminal Appeals, where he will fill a seat being vacated by Judge Michael Keasler. McClure said he’s looking forward to joining the appellate court, where he hopes his experience on the trial bench will serve him well. Best known for its role in death penalty cases, the court is Texas’ last word on criminal matters. A Texas law that requires judges to retire within a few years of turning 75 forced Keasler to step down partway through his six-year term.

SAN ANTONIO – The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals recently issued an opinion in the case of a Bexar County man convicted of capital murder, reforming his death sentence to life in prison due to intellectual disability, according to the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office. Officials said the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines intellectual disability in the range of 65-75. In 2019, officials said the Court of Criminal Appeals remanded this case to the trial court to make a new recommendation on the issue of intellectual disability. Officials said the recent ruling of the court will bring the appeals of this case to an end. This court ruling means this defendant will spend the rest of his life in prison and Mr. Marin’s family will not have to worry about this case coming back for trial.

It’s notoriously difficult for judicial candidates, even those running for the state’s high courts, to capture voters’ attention. Voters have the chance to choose four justices on the nine-member Texas Supreme Court, the state’s highest court for civil matters, and three judges on its sister body, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. This year, though, the Texas Supreme Court has found itself in the spotlight far more than usual with major coronavirus-related decisions and an unusually long list of election-related cases. “Once again, the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court steps into this election against the interests of voters and a functioning democracy,” Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said after the Harris County decision. The nation’s high court again overturned the Texas court’s decision, and Moore has since been resentenced to life in prison and released on parole.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals changed a the sentence of convicted police officer's killer from the death penalty to life in prison without parole after he was found to be intellectually disabled. The judges previously rejected 43-year-old Juan Lizcano’s intellectual disability claim but reconsidered it after the U.S. Supreme Court forced the Texas court in 2017 to change its method to determine if death penalty inmates were intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for execution. At least three other Texas death row inmates have had their sentences reduced since the high court’s ruling. Since 2002, the Supreme Court has held that people with intellectual disabilities can’t be executed, but states were left to come up with their own methods of defining the condition. Bobby Moore, Pedro Sosa and Robert Campbell have all also been taken off death row since the Supreme Court ruled against Texas practices on intellectual disability.

After 25 years on death row, Billy Wardlow, aided by neuroscientists, is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that at 18, he was too young to face Texas death penalty. Texas Department of Criminal JusticeOn Wednesday evening, Texas plans to execute Billy Joe Wardlow for a 1993 East Texas robbery and murder. After 25 years on death row, Wardlow, aided by neuroscientists, is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that at 18, he was too young to face Texas death penalty. He has also asked the Texas Supreme Court and Abbott to halt his execution because of the coronavirus pandemic. Neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor the Texas Supreme Court had ruled on Wardlows appeals Tuesday night.

The United States Supreme Court in Washington on June 11. Reynolds Stefani/CNP/ABACA via REUTERSThe U.S. Supreme Court has again ruled against Texas top criminal court in a death penalty case, the latest in the high courts repeated dismissals of Texas decisions against death row inmates. Texas Department of Criminal JusticeThe Supreme Court ruling focused on the evidence that could have been used to sway the jury from a death sentence. The dissenting justices said that was enough to indicate the Texas court had considered the standard, and argued the court shouldnt have to show it again. Since then, Moore and other Texas death row inmates with intellectual disability claims have been resentenced to life in prison.

AUSTIN – The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals heard oral arguments this week outside of the court's cavernous courtroom. “Surreal, nothing to compare it to,” said Judge Bert Richardson, a member of the court. Instead of appearing before the nine-member court in person, attorneys made their arguments remotely on a TV screen, with their images appearing along with the judges. “I think the lawyers find it a little bit more comfortable because they’re not standing in front of nine judges,” Richardson said. “It’s nice being in the courtroom and nice being with the lawyers,” Richardson said.

For Brandon Birmingham, a state district judge in Dallas, the 2020 race for Texas Court of Criminal Appeals started on election night 2018. Within weeks, he’d reached out to the state Democratic Party. This year, with a controversial Republican president on the ballot and sky-high stakes for Texas Democrats, candidates are hoping the races look more like heroes’ journeys. Democrats have not run a contested primary for the state’s high courts since 2008. As recently as last year, Democrats failed to even field a candidate in one race for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.