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Jolie McCullough reports on criminal justice issues and policy for The Texas Tribune, ranging from coverage on policing and courts to prisons and the death penalty. She came to the Tribune in early 2015 from the Albuquerque Journal, and has previously worked at the Arizona Republic. She is a graduate of Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Defense attorneys have started asking courts to set migrants free because local justice systems, overwhelmed by arrests under Gov. Greg Abbott's border security push, are routinely violating state law and constitutional due process rights. Full Story
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Gov. Greg Abbott says the line of law enforcement and military vehicles is stopping migrants from crossing the Rio Grande into Del Rio, where the number of migrants camped under a bridge keeps dropping. Full Story
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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. Full Story
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With an estimated 12,000 migrants already crowded under the international bridge and thousands more expected, Del Rio’s mayor declared an emergency Friday and requested state assistance. Full Story
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Abbott’s announcements come as thousands of migrants — mostly from Haiti — have gathered under an international bridge in Del Rio. Full Story
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Officials said immigration authorities weren’t interested in taking migrants who had no criminal conviction into federal custody. But without documentation, at least one newly released migrant soon found himself back in detention. Full Story
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Senate Bill 6 will bar those accused of violent crimes from being released from jail before trial unless they can put up cash. That provision of the bill will go into effect Dec. 2. Full Story
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John Ramirez was scheduled to die Wednesday. His last request to the state had been to let his pastor hold on to him as he died, something the state denied. The high court wants to hear oral arguments on the matter later this year. Full Story
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Texas’ near-total ban on abortions is sending patients out of state for the procedure. Advocates say many immigrants and women of color can’t leave, and that’s increasing the inequities their communities suffer. Full Story
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Under Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security push, Texas state police have arrested hundreds of migrants in the conservative county, usually after spotting them on cargo trains or walking remote ranch lands. Sent to a state prison retooled as an immigration jail, many men were left without lawyers for weeks. Full Story
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The House balked at a part of the Senate’s bill that would have barred charitable groups from posting bail for some defendants, but otherwise embraced new limits on letting people accused of violent crimes out of jail. Full Story
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After more than three weeks in jail, a trespassing charge against the man was dropped because state troopers shouldn’t have arrested him under Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security push. He wound up in bureaucratic limbo for days as federal agencies passed the responsibility for resolving his immigration status. Full Story
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The Texas governor has derided federal immigration policy as "catch and release." But unless federal authorities now take them into custody, the migrants Abbott ordered state troopers to arrest could soon be freed. Full Story
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The governor's decision to go all in on border security is evolving rapidly, and many of those on the ground don't know how it's going to work. Full Story
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Border-crossing immigrants are being arrested by Texas troopers on state charges like trespassing, and they’re starting to trickle into a prison emptied to house them. Full Story
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Houston state Rep. Garnet Coleman has been at the forefront of voting and social justice battles for decades and helped lead the 2003 flight of Democratic legislators to Oklahoma. Not being with his colleagues who went to Washington, D.C., has been agonizing, he says. Full Story
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If the House Democrats who skipped town to block voting legislation don’t return before the special session ends, the Senate bills will languish without becoming law. Full Story
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Conservative priorities to restrict pretrial release from jail and ban critical race theory in schools were up in the air after Democratic lawmakers chartered flights to Washington, D.C. But so was funding for retired teachers and legislative employees. Full Story
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Legislators in the House and Senate filed matching bills to change state bail practices earlier this week, echoing legislation that failed to pass in the regular session. On Saturday, committees in both chambers approved the bills. Full Story
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While many Texas prisons are understaffed, some dangerously so, the emptied-out Briscoe Unit in Dilley is in "maintenance mode" as officials scramble to implement the governor's plan to increase the state's role in border enforcement. Full Story
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