Depending on whom you ask, Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins’ repeated refusal to allow Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott into a local corruption investigation is either bold or stupid. Either way, it’s unusual. Abbott has offered prosecution assistance to local district attorneys 226 times since 2007, when lawmakers first gave him permission to do it. In all but 16 cases, he’s been invited in. And Watkins didn't decline politely.

Ninety minutes of back-and-forth on Wednesday between a House committee and representatives of the Texas Forensic Science Commission — but not its chairman — covered the besieged agency’s nonexistent enforcement power, lack of written procedural guidelines, and public records policy. Oh, and the late Cameron Todd Willingham.

Hank Skinner was set to die Wednesday for the 1993 murders of his live-in girlfriend and her two mentally disabled adult sons — a crime he insists he did not commit. About an hour before he was to have poison pushed through his veins, the U.S. Supreme Court spared his life.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay this evening of the execution of death row inmate Hank Skinner, who was scheduled to die today.

The seven-member Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles today unanimously rejected death-row inmate Hank Skinner's request for a reprieve from his execution, which is scheduled for Wednesday.

Grissom on the 1.2 million Texans who've lost their licenses under the Driver Responsibility Act and the impenetrable black box that is the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, Ramshaw and Kraft on nurses with substance abuse problems and rehabilitation that can get them back to work, M. Smith finds it's not easy being Rick Green, Stiles on counting Texans (and everybody else), Rapoport on the State Board of Education's war with itself and the runoff in SBOE District 10, Thevenot's revealing interview with a big-city superintendent on closing bad schools, Aguilar on the tensions over water on the Texas-Mexico border, Hamilton on the new Coffee Party, Hu on Kesha Rogers and why her party doesn't want her, Philpott on the runoff in HD-47, Ramsey on Bill White and the politics of taxes, and E. Smith's conversation with Game Change authors Mark Halperin and John Heleimann: The best of our best from March 15 to 19.

Chromosal Laboratories, a DNA testing lab in Phoenix, Ariz., told Gov. Rick Perry that it will test evidence in the Hank Skinner case for free and within 30 days if he grants a reprieve of the convicted murderer's March 24 execution date.

"There's really no e-mail to send you my questions?" Nope, she said, you'll have to fax them. Fax?! No e-mail?!?

Gov. Rick Perry issued a posthumous pardon today for Tim Cole, who died in prison after he was wrongly convicted of rape.

In an unexpected reversal, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has thrown out Charles Dean Hood's death sentence on the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court appeal and national media attention.

The trial judge who initially decided Hank Skinner would die Feb. 24 — one week from today — has pushed the execution date back to March 24, says Skinner attorney Rob Owen, co-director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Capital Punishment Clinic.

Texans are more worried about the economy and the direction of the country than anything else, according to the new University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll. Other notable findings: Nearly two-thirds support either gay marriage or civil unions, nearly half prefer private health insurance to a government-run plan, and more than a third think the Legislature meets every year.

The death penalty and DNA testing in a 16-year-old triple murder in the Texas Panhandle. The second debate between the three Republican candidates for governor. Charter schools are having a hard time hanging on to the employees that matter the most: Teachers. The possibilities and perils of a switch to electronic medical records. A rundown of top races. Who's giving to candidates, and how much? Social networks and politicians. Ballots: The slow reveal. And a new and highly requested feature makes its debut. The best of our best from January 23 to 29, 2010.

It took a crew of eight Northwestern University students to bring national attention to questions about Hank Skinner's death sentence. But his legal pleas for more DNA testing of crime scene evidence — and his lawsuit against the Gray County district attorney — have gone nowhere. Unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes, he'll be executed on Feburary 24.

Sharon Keller, the presiding judge of the state's highest criminal court, will not be removed from the bench following a trial and review by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.

Gov. Rick Perry appears willing to sign a posthumous pardon for the exonerated Timothy Cole after Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott today issued an opinion that said the governor could grant one.

Everything old is new again.

The season for speculating is drawing to an end.  Politicians, it’s time to stake your claim.