Man Who Killed Texas Game Warden Executed
James Garrett Freeman shot and killed Justin Hurst, a game warden, following a high-speed chase in 2007. He was executed Wednesday evening, the second execution in Texas this year. Full Story
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Jolie McCullough was a reporter at The Texas Tribune from 2015 to 2023. She began as a data visualization journalist and then reported on criminal justice policy, ranging from policing and courts to prisons and the death penalty. She joined the Tribune from the Albuquerque Journal, her hometown newspaper. She previously worked at the Arizona Republic and is a graduate of Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
James Garrett Freeman shot and killed Justin Hurst, a game warden, following a high-speed chase in 2007. He was executed Wednesday evening, the second execution in Texas this year. Full Story
The Texas Tribune's Prison Inmates database is now updated with the latest data available from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. It is current as of December 2015. Full Story
Richard Masterson, who was convicted and sentenced to death for a 2001 strangulation and murder in Harris County, was executed Wednesday night. Full Story
Since we launched our interactive death row database in June, five Texas inmates have been executed and one died of natural causes. Use this tool to see all 253 inmates currently on Texas' death row, searchable by race, age and other factors. Full Story
Take a look back at Blood Lessons, a Texas Tribune/Houston Chronicle investigation into whether the nation’s oil refineries learned the lessons of the deadly explosion at BP’s Texas City plant in 2005. Full Story
Revisit our Paid to Prosecute project, a six-month Texas Tribune/Austin American-Statesman investigation that revealed a chummy and unusual financial arrangement between Texas Mutual Insurance and the Travis County DA's office. Full Story
Texas juries imposed new death sentences only twice in 2015 — the fewest since the death penalty was reinstated nationwide almost 40 years ago. Full Story
We've added the salaries for employees of Dallas ISD and Travis County to our Government Salaries Explorer. Use the explorer to view government salaries by gender, ethnicity, length of employment and more for more than 400,000 state employees. Full Story
Federal resettlement numbers show a refugee population in Texas that is mostly from Myanmar — which the U.S. State Department still classifies as Burma — and Iraq, with most living in the state’s major metropolitan areas. Full Story
William Mason was again sentenced to death in Harris County last month after being granted a new punishment trial. He was originally sent to death row in 1992 for the kidnapping and murder of his wife. There are now 253 people in Texas living with a death sentence. See our updated database of these men and women. Full Story