Dog breeders would be regulated for the first time in Texas under a bill the House tentatively approved today.

Harris County paid a forensic psychologist who was reprimanded earlier this month more than $300,000 to test defendants for intellectual disabilities from 2002 until 2008.

A psychologist who examined 14 inmates now on Texas’ death row — and two others who were subsequently executed — and found them intellectually competent enough to face the death penalty has agreed never to perform such evaluations again. 

Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in 2004, convicted of igniting the 1991 blaze that destroyed his home and killed his three young daughters. Click here for a timeline of the major events in the Willingham saga.

The so-called puppy mill bill that has dog breeders and animal rights groups in Texas squared off in a war of words, HB 1451 by state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, will be up for a vote on the House floor tomorrow.

State jail officials would get a clearer picture of potential problems in county lockups under a bill a Senate panel considered on Tuesday that would require counties to report the monthly turnover rate among jailers.

For the first time in decades, first-time drunken-driving offenders could get deferred adjudication under a bill the Senate Criminal Justice Committee considered Tuesday.

Brandon Darby has transformed himself from liberal social justice organizer and radical to much-maligned FBI informant to now right-of-center conservative hero — of a sort. 

She’s volunteered at Emancipet, an Austin animal rescue group. Her Facebook page is populated with posts from animal rights groups. And she’s also an attorney for the state’s regulating agency who is helping to draft a bill that dog breeders say is designed to kill their industry.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a 30-day stay for death row inmate Cleve Foster, who was scheduled tonight to become the first Texas inmate executed using the state's new three-drug lethal injection cocktail.

The 3rd Court of Appeals today denied two death row inmates' request to stop the state from using a new lethal injection drug.

Texas laws more strictly regulate euthanasia of animals than the lethal injection of death row inmates, according to a report released Sunday by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas and the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University Law School.

The Texas House started with a $164.5 billion budget and ended with the same total. But lawmakers spent the better part of a weekend making changes inside the budget for 2012-13 before giving it their approval, 98 to 49.

Travis County District Court Judge Stephen Yelenosky this afternoon denied the request of two death row inmates to temporarily halt executions with Texas' new lethal injection drug. Lawyers for Cleve Foster and Humberto Leal said they would immediately appeal the judge's decision.

We liveblogged the full debate over HB 1, the House version of the general appropriations bills for the next biennium, which passed late Sunday night 98 to 49.