Texas

08/30/2012
Voter ID

ACLU Lens: Federal Court Blocks Texas Voter ID Law

By Vesna Jaksic, ACLU at 2:46pm

A federal court today struck Texas’s discriminatory voter ID law, which would have prevented many eligible citizens from exercising their fundamental right to vote. 

The ACLU had intervened in the case in order to represent individuals and organizations who would be negatively impacted, and protect the right to vote. Today’s decision by a three-judge Washington, D.C. panel comes at a time when the right to vote is under attack nationwide.

“By blocking this law, the court reaffirmed the right of all people in this country to participate in our democracy,” said Nancy Abudu, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Voting Rights Project, which intervened in the case along with the ACLU of Texas.

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08/17/2012
Breaking the Addiction to Incarceration

Breaking the Addiction to Incarceration: Weekly Highlights

By Alex Stamm, ACLU Center for Justice at 1:39pm

Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history. And yet, our criminal justice system has failed on every count: public safety, fairness and cost-effectiveness. Across the country, the criminal justice reform conversation is heating up. Each week, we feature our some of the most exciting and relevant news in overincarceration discourse that we’ve spotted from the previous week. Check back weekly for our top picks.

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08/09/2012
Asset Forfeiture Abuse

Settlement Means No More Highway Robbery in Tenaha, Texas

By Elora Mukherjee, Staff Attorney, ACLU Racial Justice Program at 11:22am

On Friday, the ACLU settled a class action lawsuit, pending court approval, against officials in the East Texas town of Tenaha and Shelby County over the rampant practice of stopping and searching drivers, almost always Black or Latino, and often seizing their cash and other valuable property. The money seized by officers during these stops went directly into department coffers. It was highway robbery, targeting those who could least afford to challenge the officers’ abuse of power, under the guise of a so-called “drug interdiction” program and made possible by Texas’s permissive civil asset forfeiture laws. 

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07/17/2012
U.S. Death Penalty

A Tale of Three States: Executing the Mentally Disabled

By Brian Stull, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 3:54pm

Georgia: On Monday, the State of Georgia stands ready to strap Warren Hill to a gurney, place IV lines in his arms, and pump his body with poison until he dies.  Warren Hill has an IQ of 70, and is intellectually disabled (mentally retarded).  That was the finding of a Georgia trial judge who held a hearing and looked at the relevant evidence – applying United States Supreme Court precedent barring execution of the intellectually disabled under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the court ruled that Hill could not be executed.

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06/22/2012
Title IX

Celebrating Title IX at 40: Texas Victory Leads to Better Response to Sexual Assault in Schools

By Ariela Migdal, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 10:56am

My kids’ school let out for the summer this week, and as I drove by the locked doors today I was overcome with a warm feeling that comes when you know your children were able to learn in a safe environment. Our client, Rachel Bradshaw (in previous communications about this case Rachel was referred to as “Faith” to protect her privacy while this matter was under OCR investigation), used to think that she was safe at school too, until that feeling was shattered after she was sexually assaulted by another student. Instead of supporting her or taking steps to support Rachel's ability to learn, her school responded to the rape by exiling her to a disciplinary program with her attacker, where she had to see him daily. 

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06/20/2012
Solitary Confinement

An Innocent Man’s Tortured Days on Texas’s Death Row

By Anthony Graves, who spent years in solitary confinement on Texas’ death row before being proven innocent in 2010. Yesterday he testified about the experience at a Senate subcommittee hearing on solitary confinement. His website is www.anthonybelieves.com.

On November 1, 1994, I heard the gavel fall and the judge announce, “Anthony Graves, I hereby sentence you to death by lethal injection.” The jury had already convicted me of murdering six people and burning down their house down to cover up the crime. I was completely innocent: they had the wrong guy. I was scared of dying for a crime I did not commit, but I believed in my innocence and hoped someone, somewhere would make it right.

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06/08/2012
Medical Marijuana

Medical Marijuana: The Tipping Point

By Rebecca McCray, ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project & Emma Andersson, Criminal Law Reform Project at 3:21pm

Two recent elections, a New York judge’s personal plea, a new state law and a new public opinion poll demonstrate that a seismic national shift has occurred in political attitudes toward medical marijuana. This cascade of developments dramatically illustrates just how far we’ve come since California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana in 1996, and it indicates that our collective compassion is eroding the once-ironclad political will to deny an effective medicine to our sick fellow citizens.

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05/15/2012
U.S. Death Penalty

New Proof of an Old Fear: Execution of the Innocent

By Cassandra Stubbs, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 4:58pm

The State of Texas, long the nation's leader in executions, has now earned the dubious title of the state most likely to execute the innocent. In 2004, Texas executed Cameron Todd Willingham, despite compelling evidence that he was actually innocent of the arson which caused the death of his three small children. Now, newly assembled evidence suggests that Carlos DeLuna, executed by Texas in 1989, was also innocent. A team of researchers from Columbia Law School today released a new report about DeLuna's case, Los Tocayos Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Conviction. The full report, along with video clips and interviews about the case, are available at the Columbia Human Rights Law Review's website.

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05/15/2012
Solitary Confinement

16 and Solitary: Texas Jails Isolate Children

By Amy Fettig, ACLU National Prison Project & Matt Simpson, ACLU of Texas at 3:06pm

Imagine locking a teenager in a bathroom for an entire day, a week, a month, six months, a year, or longer. What would happen to that child? She would miss school. She wouldn't be able to exercise or burn off energy in a healthy way. She wouldn't be able to interact with other kids or adults. She would probably have a mental breakdown. She might even hurt herself. If a parent treated a child this way, most of us would agree that such actions would constitute child abuse. In Texas county jails — and the majority of jails across the country — such treatment is simply a matter of routine.

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05/15/2012
War on Drugs

Without a Card to Play, Texas Grandma Sentenced to Life Without Parole for First-Time Drug Offense

By Rebecca McCray, ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project at 10:04am

Texans can sleep more soundly at night knowing that Elisa Castillo, a grandmother and nonviolent first-time drug offender, is serving a life without parole sentence in Fort Worth. Yes, you read that right — the latest casualty of our War on Drugs is a grandmother who never even touched the drugs that sent her to prison. Though she may not look like public enemy No. 1, our persistently illogical criminal justice system has determined that this harsh punishment fits her crime. The truth, though, is that her fate was sealed, in large part because she didn't have a card to play when negotiating her sentence.

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