Courts

Even if 84 percent of Americans believe judges should not hear cases from major campaign contributors, the big Texas law firms that have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to them over the last ten years see nothing wrong with business as usual.

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We've added a few new features to our campaign donations app, including the ability to filter the search results by the donation amount, year and donor type. 

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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.

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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.

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Hank Skinner is set to be executed for a 1993 murder he's always maintained he didn't commit. He wants the state to test whether his DNA matches evidence found at the scene, but prosecutors say the time to contest his conviction has come and gone. He has less than a month to change their minds.

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Some deep-pocketed trial lawyers didn't make the Twenty Who Gave Plenty list. Why not? 

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Compared with other states, Texas alternates between merely OK and downright bad in rankings of how transparently government bodies conduct open meetings and respond to requests for public information. But we can fix that.

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Houston homebuilder Bob Perry tops the list of the biggest donors to Texas candidates in the last half of 2009. McAllen developer Alonzo Cantu and Dallas businessman Ross Perot Sr. also gave large sums.

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The governor's race candidates fill their campaign coffers disproportionately from some rural areas, according to a per-capita calculation. Each Dallas resident gave $1 to the race in 2009, for example, while those in Blanco donated $57.

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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.

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State employees who commit heinous acts against Texas' most profoundly disabled citizens rarely get charged with crimes, let alone go to jail. A Texas Tribune review of a decade’s worth of abuse and neglect firings at state institutions found that just 16 percent of the most violent or negligent employees were ever charged with crimes.

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Now that she'll join Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison on stage at the second GOP debate — now that she's cracked spoiler-worthy double digits in the latest poll and will fundraise, Ron Paul-style, through an online "money bomb"  — it's fair to ask what longshot gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina is in it for.

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To better understand the geography of the money race, we mapped the candidates' contributions by city, using graduated symbols to highlight their most lucrative areas. The bubbles in the maps get larger based on the percentage of a candidates' total take. 

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Kay Bailey Hutchison says Texas government should be more transparent. Rick Perry says it already is. Let the sniping begin.

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Search more than $35 million in campaign donations and loans collected by the top candidates in the governor's race. You can also explore how they spent the money.

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A recent juvenile justice report finds drug-addicted TYC inmates who didn't participate in the agency's drug treatment program were less likely to reoffend than those who did. 

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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.

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