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Terri Langford is the Tribune's health and human services reporter based in Austin. Langford is a veteran journalist, having worked at the Florida Times Union, The Associated Press, The Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle, WNYC, Honolulu Civil Beat and Texas Standard/KUT. Langford has a bachelor’s degree in government from the University of Texas at Austin. She has covered various city and state agencies, criminal justice and health and human services for the Houston Chronicle, The Dallas Morning News, The Associated Press, WNYC and Texas Standard at KUT.
During the 84th legislative session, lawmakers passed open carry and campus carry legislation and voted to make cannabis oil available to epilepsy patients. Find more details on these and other law and order issues on the Texas Legislative Guide. Full Story
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To add transparency to the state's capital punishment system, the Tribune is unveiling a new tool for readers: Faces of Death Row. It profiles all 261 inmates facing execution, summarizes their crimes and allows filtering by race, age, sex and years spent on death row. Full Story
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The former prosecutor who won a wrongful conviction of Anthony Graves for capital murder, sending him to Texas death row where he was nearly executed twice, has been disbarred. Full Story
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More than three weeks after Waco police arrested 177 bikers following a deadly shootout, none have been charged in the killings, nearly half remain in jail and legal experts — including some former prosecutors — wonder what McLennan County is doing. Full Story
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Kyle Janek, the head of the state’s embattled Health and Human Services Commission, will step down July 1 and be replaced by his deputy, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Friday. Full Story
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A death row inmate who has proclaimed his innocence for three decades was executed Wednesday night in Huntsville. Lester Bower, 67, became the oldest death row inmate executed in Texas after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene. Full Story
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Lawmakers have decided to stop treating truant students like criminals, sending them to adult court where they face possible jail time for skipping school. But 17-year-old criminal offenders will still enter the adult court system. Full Story
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With one Texas county facing a federal investigation into how it punishes chronic school-skippers — and Texas one of only two states that prosecute truants in adult courts — lawmakers are weighing two House measures that would decriminalize truancy. Full Story
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After a night of dramatic maneuvers in the Texas House, lawmakers were back at it on Wednesday morning, with a handful of irked conservatives using parliamentary tactics to kill previously uncontested Senate bills. Full Story
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A final effort to raise from 17 to 18 the age at which offenders automatically enter the adult legal system made it through the Texas House on Tuesday, tacked onto a bill reorganizing the Texas Juvenile Justice Department. Full Story
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