The latest criminal justice news from The Texas Tribune.
Texans are more worried about the economy and the direction of the country than anything else, according to the new University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll. Other notable findings: Nearly two-thirds support either gay marriage or civil unions, nearly half prefer private health insurance to a government-run plan, and more than a third think the Legislature meets every year. Full Story
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Find the salaries of more than 340,000 public employees with our enhanced data application, including those working at the largest state agencies as well as individual public schools, cities and mass-transit operators. And universities: Did you know, for instance, that of the 10 highest-paid professors at the state's two largest universities, nine are Aggies? Full Story
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The Texas Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of a $5 tax on admission to the state's strip clubs — a measure lawmakers implemented in 2007 to raise money for sexual assault prevention and low-income health insurance. Full Story
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Getting a look at correspondence, documents, reports, etc. related to death row inmate Hank Skinner's case is proving more difficult than I imagined. Full Story
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The Texas Ethics Commission and the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts are opening up more of their data to the public at no charge. Full Story
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The federal push for accountability at "persistently low-achieving" schools across Texas is running smack into the hard, slow work of improvement at the local level. Full Story
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Two former Texas Supreme Court justices and a Goliath of state judicial politics are trying to oust the 10th Court of Appeals judge from the courthouse that he once cleaned as a janitor. Full Story
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Thevenot on the abysmally low community college graduation rate and higher ed's coming budgetary winter. Ramshaw on Terri Hodge's guilty plea and hasty exit. Grissom on the Department of Public Safety's use of dreaded federal stimulus funds to plug a hole in the state's border security budget. Hu on the first of the intraparty face-offs in our Primary Color series. Ramsey and Stiles on the congressional candidates with the most money on hand. Ramsey on whether Farouk Shami's accent and name are an obstacle to his election. Aguilar on the fever-tick epidemic overwhelming South Texas. Rapoport on TxDOT's hard road and the State Board of Education's lack of finance expertise. Philpott on how Barack Obama's budget will impact Texas. M. Smith on whether lawyers giving to judges is a good thing. Hamilton on the latest transportation innovations on the drawing board. The best of our best from February 1 to 5, 2010. Full Story
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Her office is studying efforts to release raw data in New York and San Francisco for ideas. Full Story
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The latest campaign finance reports show that both candidates raised more than $700,000 in January. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison spent more than any other candidate: $3.3 million. Full Story
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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. Full Story
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Attorney General Greg Abbott has a message for young, hormonal Texans: Sending your BF or GF naughty pics over the phone could be criminal. Full Story
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. Full Story
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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. Full Story
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I interviewed Henry "Hank" Watkins Skinner, 47, at the Polunsky Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice — death row — on January 20, 2010. Skinner was convicted in 1995 of murdering his girlfriends and her two sons; the state has scheduled his execution for February 24. Skinner has always maintained that he's innocent and for 15 year has asked the state to release DNA evidence that he says will prove he was not the killer. Full Story
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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. Full Story
Local elected officials and civil rights groups urged legislators at a committee hearing today to implement more programs for women and girls in Texas prisons and jails. Full Story
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. Full Story
Some deep-pocketed trial lawyers didn't make the Twenty Who Gave Plenty list. Why not? Full Story
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. Full Story
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