On Thursday night Texas will murder again…DEXTER JOHNSON, condemned for the slaying of a couple in 2006 during a carjacking committed in Houston with four accomplices. Mr. Johnson has fought his conviction during his time on death row, filing appeals based on ineffective assistance of counsel, racial bias, intellectual disability, brain damage and his long history of schizophrenia and psychotic breaks.On April 29, 2019, the Court of Criminal Appeals denied Mr. Johnson’s request for a…

If you listen to Republicans such as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Senate Bill 17 provides relief for those occupational holders who have sincere religious beliefs. Of course, getting past the fact that back in the day Mr. Patrick, when he was the sports director at KHOU in Houston, once painted himself blue on television, is a little bit difficult. For the rest of us, Senate Bill 17 would allow license holders to discriminate against…

On the way home from the office the other night I caught the current episode of the Murderish podcast – “Lime Street Fire.” The episode concerns an arson investigation in Jacksonville. Jami Rice also covered the Cameron Todd Willingham case earlier this year. The episode is important because it looks at the evolution of arson investigation. As anyone who has looked into arson cases knows, most of the knowledge an arson investigator has is what…

On Thursday night the Texas killing machine fires up again…PATRICK MURPHY, convicted under the Texas law of parties, which allows prosecutors to charge a person linked with a murder as if they, too, had pulled the trigger. He was in a group of convicts that in 2000 made the biggest prison escape in Texas history. They broke into a Dallas-area store on Christmas Eve to steal guns. An Irving police officer was shot to death…

Tomorrow night the State of Texas will murder once again…BILLY COBLE, 70. One of the oldest people on death row, he was sentenced to death for the 1989 murders of his estranged wife’s parents and brother in Axtell. The brother was a Waco police officer. On appear, Mr. Coble asserted that his trial was tainted by perjured testimony, an unfair venue and junk science.The death sentence was thrown out in 2007 because the Fifth Circuit …

Last month five officers from the Houston Police Department were injured – four were shot – in a drug raid gone incredibly wrong. At the time we were barraged with statements from HPD that the police raided the house, shot the dogs and killed the residents, Donald Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, because a confidential informant told them the couple had heroin and guns in the house. Joe Gamaldi, the head of the local police union,…