The latest criminal justice news from The Texas Tribune.
The Texan who is the U.S. House's top Republican on homeland security issued a scathing indictment of Mexican officials on Tuesday for letting Joaquin Guzmán, the world’s most notorious drug lord, tunnel out of a maximum-security prison. Full Story
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The prison escape of Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán is an affront to U.S. law enforcement, which has worked for years to build a case against the kingpin, a member of Texas' congressional delegation said Sunday. Full Story
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Juvenile justice advocates applauded when the Texas Legislature decided this year that repeated school truancy will no longer be a crime. But school and court officials worry they are losing tools that have actually worked at keeping kids in school. Full Story
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Attorneys for the Obama administration will try again on Friday to persuade a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans to let a controversial immigration policy take effect. Full Story
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Attorney General Ken Paxton on Wednesday filed a lawsuit over the Environmental Protection Agency's rejection of parts of a Texas clean air program, launching the state’s second battle against EPA regulations in less than two weeks. Full Story
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Over the course of this year's legislative session, House Speaker Joe Straus and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick made their priorities known by what bills got the lowest bill numbers. Take a look at how those proposals fared. Full Story
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Roughly 150 Texas attorneys have signed on to a letter threatening to file a complaint with the State Bar of Texas against Attorney General Ken Paxton for his response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage. Full Story
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In a statement, Attorney General Ken Paxton says the prosecutors pursuing a felony fraud indictment against him are inexperienced and politically motivated. Full Story
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Texas is set to receive another $788 million stemming from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill under a settlement between BP, the federal government and five Gulf Coast states. Full Story
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Ken Paxton's legal troubles — stemming for his admission last year that he violated state securities law — may be getting more serious. A special prosecutor says he plans to start presenting evidence in less than a month seeking to indict the attorney general for first-degree felony securities fraud. Full Story
Three days after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide, some Texas county clerks are refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Full Story
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A U.S. Supreme Court decision Monday that upheld the use of an execution drug used in Oklahoma will not change how death row inmates in Texas are executed, according to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman. Full Story
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As he redoubles his anti-Washington crusade on the presidential campaign trail, Ted Cruz is receiving an assist from an unlikely source: the high court he used to argue before. Full Story
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A growing number of asylum-seekers are asking for safe haven based on a factor that isn't usually associated with a need to flee one's homeland: gender identity. In the days before the Supreme Court ruled in a landmark gay marriage case, immigrant rights groups were drawing attention to the plight of LGBT immigrants. Full Story
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Texas' Republican leaders suffered a historic loss on Friday when the U.S. Supreme Court held that state bans on gay marriage are unconstitutional. But social conservatives vowed not to go down without a fight over religious liberty. Full Story
The Texas Supreme Court on Friday ruled it has no authority or jurisdiction to intervene in its sister court's ban of prominent death penalty lawyer David Dow. Full Story
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Elated couples across Texas hurried into county clerks' offices Friday to apply for marriage licenses following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage. Full Story
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Handing gay rights advocates a monumental victory, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday ruled that marriages between couples of the same sex cannot be prohibited by states, a decision that overrides Texas’ ban on gay marriage. Full Story
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It was a mostly new cast of characters in the Texas Senate, a chamber historically ruled by seniority, that flexed its political muscle to stop a statewide texting-while-driving ban this year. Full Story
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The number of inmates on Texas’ death row is falling. At its peak in 1999, 460 men and women were living with a death sentence in Texas, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. Today, there are 260. Full Story
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