State Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, filed a bill today that would make it a state jail felony to "lewdly violate" a person's privacy in a place like a public restroom.

The next execution is scheduled to take place April 5 — less than a month from now — but the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has not yet decided which drug it will use to replace sodium thiopental, one of three used in the state's execution protocol.

Abolishing the state's two existing juvenile justice agencies and creating one new department to prevent crime and treat and punish young offenders could save Texas up to $150 million, lawmakers said today.

The U.S. Supreme Court has given Texas death row inmate Hank Skinner another chance at getting DNA testing done on evidence he says could prove he did not kill his live-in girlfriend and her two sons in 1993.

To keep critical jail inspections going even as they cut funding to the agency that provides them, lawmakers are proposing that the counties pay for them.

House lawmakers delayed consideration of abortion sonogram legislation until tomorrow, after Democrats raised two points of order against the bill. Some speculate finding technicalities will be Democrats' go-to strategy this session.  

The U.S. trade representative took a brief time-out during his visit to Austin last week to talk with the Tribune about trade with Mexico, public perception of the Obama administration, Dallas politics and his own political future.

Disability advocates gathered at the Capitol today to call on lawmakers to use the Rainy Day Fund, to raise new revenue and, above all else, to not cut community-based services for the disabled. Over and over again the crowd chanted, "No cuts! No cuts!"

Rev. Carroll Pickett holds the world record for witnessing the most state executions as a chaplain. He saw 95 men die by lethal injection during his career as the death house chaplain.

The onetime death house chaplain on what it was like to witness the most state executions of anyone in his job (95, by lethal injection), what changed his mind about the death penalty and why lawmakers should continue to fund the chaplain program.

Anthony Graves, who was freed from jail this year after spending 18 years behind bars for brutal murders he did not commit, sued the state of Texas today to officially clear his name and to force the Texas comptroller to pay him for the time he was wrongfully imprisoned.

Proposed reductions in community-based mental health treatment, experts say, will mean more mentally ill Texans are likely to end up on the streets, in emergency rooms and behind bars, where it will cost local taxpayers even more to care for them.

As lawmakers consider cutting community-based mental health care services by about 20 percent in the 2012-2013 budget, the Texas Tribune talks with mentally ill Harris County Jail inmates and with consumers who use community-based services to stay out of jail and off the streets.

As lawmakers consider cutting community-based mental health care services, the Tribune talks with mentally ill Harris County Jail inmates and with consumers who use community-based services to stay out of jail and off the streets.