TribWeek: In Case You Missed It

Bickering over whether to debate — as Rick Perry and Bill White are doing now — is nothing new. In our multimedia look at three decades of Texas gubernatorial debates, reluctant incumbents are hardly unusual, but the leading candidates have faced off every time.

Judge Sharon Keller has been pilloried as the villain of the Texas criminal justice system, but supporters credit the chief of the state's highest criminal court with working to ensure fair trials for impoverished defendants.

After a series of investigative reports revealed serious problems with the quality of legal representation for indigent defendants on Texas death row, lawmakers created the Office of Capital Writs. California lawyer Brad Levenson will be moving to Texas to open the new office and attempt to restore some confidence in the state's busy system of capital punishment.

Last school year, the Texas Education Agency implemented a new “growth measure” purported to reward schools for improving student performance — even if they failed state tests. The effect on state accountability ratings was immediate and dramatic: The number of campuses considered “exemplary” by the state doubled to 2,158. But a new analysis shows the projections of future student success may be wrong as much as half the time.

A brief meeting in a judge’s chambers Wednesday cut short a brewing turf war between HillCo Partners and two former lobbyists it had sued after they quit and took a stable of clients with them.

As he has taken on natural gas companies and the agencies that regulate them, DISH mayor Calvin Tillman has become a media darling, an unlikely face of oil and gas reform and a public speaker criss-crossing the country. Now he’s ready to give up — and to leave town entirely.

Ciudad Juárez's mayoral election has Texas' economic leaders intrigued as the border city plans to bid farewell to its current mayor in October. But residents in the city plagued by cartel violence, expect little change, and many brace for continued bloodshed.

Two Texas universities are building the biggest power plants of their kind in the nation, converting the sweat energy of exercising students into electricity to fuel their campuses.