The all-Republican Court of Criminal Appeals has undergone extensive turnover since AG Ken Paxton began targeting incumbent judges.

After 11 years, the conviction of Brandon Jenkins in Liberty County for murdering his father-in-law is under review due to concerns about mishandled and withheld evidence that may have supported his self-defense claim.

A district judge provided two recommendations to the Court of Criminal Appeals in 2024, but the court’s process provides no details on when it will rule on the death row inmate’s innocence.

Maggie Ellis and Kristen Hawkins win Texas Supreme Court Dem primaries. John Messinger wins his GOP race for Court of Criminal Appeals, while Alison Fox and Thomas Smith head to a runoff.

The criminal court decides death penalty case appeals and rules on petitions for those who believe they’ve been wrongfully detained. Here’s a look at who’s running for the court’s three seats on the 2026 ballot.

A.J. Armstrong’s defense argues the state is blocking transparency, saying prosecutors misrepresented facts and law to avoid a public evidentiary hearing in his murder appeal.

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office has asked Texas’ highest criminal court to block a new hearing in the A.J. Armstrong case, arguing the appellate court exceeded its authority in ordering a possible retrial in the 2023 double-murder conviction.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has stayed the Oct. 16th execution of Robert Robertson, who was convicted in 2003 of killing his 2-year old daughter, Nikki Curtis.

The latest calls to stave off the politically charged execution come after a summer where GOP leaders asked the state courts to kick Democrats out of office and throw Beto O’Rourke in jail.

Dissenting judges expressed frustration over a lack of clarity on why the case of David Leonard Wood, whose execution in March was halted, was remanded to the lower court.

The now 68-year-old inmate has been declared incompetent since 1987 when his initial execution was halted due to severe mental illness, including schizophrenia and organic brain dysfunction.

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.

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 Texas Supreme Court has issued a stay order in the execution of Robert Roberson.

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.

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.

A Texas judge has dismissed illegal voting charges against a Houston man who drew widespread attention after standing in line six hours to cast a ballot in the 2020 presidential primary.

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.

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.

AUSTIN, Texas – A Texas appeals court has delayed what would have been the first execution scheduled in the state this year. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Friday granted the stay for Blaine Milam, 31, to review intellectual disability claims. Prosecutors say Milam savagely beat, bit, strangled, and sexually mutilated the girl over a period of 30 hours. In its ruling, the appeals court ordered Milam's claims of intellectual disability be reviewed by his trial court. The U.S, Supreme Court in 2002 barred the execution of intellectually disabled people, but it has given states some discretion to decide how to determine such disabilities.

His appeal centers on whether the statements he made to internal affairs investigators were wrongly used against him in his criminal case. The issue came up repeatedly during Oliver’s trial. 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.

Jesse 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.

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.

HOUSTON The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals requested additional evidence in the Lydell Grant case on Wednesday. He was convicted and spent nearly a decade in prison before the Innocence Project of Texas helped get the DNA evidence retested. After Grant was released from prison, Carter confessed to the Houston Police Department, and DNA evidence tied him to the crime. The Innocence Project of Texas, who represents Grant, said they provided the TCCA with Carters confession tape more than two months ago. The Innocence Project argues, if it had been, he would have never been charged in the first place, let alone be convicted.

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.