Texas death row inmate Jose Garcia Briseño, whose case was used by the Texas courts to establish a very restrictive definition of mental retardation, has been resentenced to life without parole. His sentence was the result of a plea bargain ending years of litigation. Briseño has been on death row for over 20 years, and received a stay of execution in 2009 just 5 days before he was to be executed. Briseño's lawyers have argued he is intellectually disabled, and therefore ineligible for the death penalty, but a Texas court said his crime required forethought, planning, and complex execution, so he was not mentally retarded. No other state uses such non-scientific factors in determining intellectual disability. Recently, the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities criticized the use of these "Briseño factors" in a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court: “[The Texas] impressionistic ‘test’ directs fact-finders to use ‘factors’ that are based on false stereotypes about mental retardation that effectively exclude all but the most severely incapacitated.” (Chester v. Thaler 2012). Staff from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice had earlier intervened on Briseño's behalf because he had been so helpful to other inmates.
On June 12, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) held that former death row inmate Jerry Hartfield has been held in prison for 33 years despite having no valid conviction. The court concluded: "The status of the judgment of conviction is that Petitioner is under no conviction or sentence." Hartfield, an illiterate man with an IQ of 51, had his capital conviction overturned by the same court in 1980 because his trial jury was improperly selected. The court ordered a new trial for Hartfield, but that trial was never held. In 1983, then-Governor Mark White attempted to commute Hartfield’s death sentence to life, but the CCA's recent ruling said the commutation was invalid because Hartfield had no conviction and hence, no sentence. He has remained in prison--not convicted of any crime--the entire time. The CCA's ruling was prompted by a request from the 
On May 28, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (5-4) in Trevino v. Thaler that a death row inmate in Texas can raise claims of ineffective counsel for the first time in federal court if they were unable to raise the claim in state appeals. The Court decided that its ruling in Martinez v. Ryan (2012), which provided such a right in an Arizona case, applies to this case in Texas because the “state procedural framework, by reason of its design and operation, makes it highly unlikely in a typical case that a defendant will have a meaningful opportunity to raise a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel on direct appeal.” In Martinez v. Ryan, the Supreme Court ruled that “procedural default will not bar a federal habeas court from hearing a substantial claim of ineffective assistance at trial if, in the initial-review collateral proceeding, there was no counsel or counsel in that proceeding was ineffective.”
On May 16, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed a bill known as the "Michael Morton Act" that will require prosecutors to open their files to defendants and keep records of the evidence they disclose. The Act is named for Michael Morton (pictured), who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1987. He was exonerated in 2011 after DNA evidence revealed that someone else had murdered his wife. Morton's lawyers discovered that the original prosecutor had withheld evidence that could have proven Morton's innocence. The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brady v. Maryland (1963) already requires prosecutors to hand over to defendants any evidence that is "material either to guilt or to punishment," but Texas' new law requires disclosure of all police reports and witness statements, regardless of whether the evidence is material to guilt or punishment. Kathryn Kase, Executive Director of the Texas Defender Service, which represents death row inmates, said, "This is a great day for fairness in Texas. The Michael Morton Act will reduce wrongful convictions; it is something we can all be very proud of." Twelve inmates have been exonerated and freed from Texas' death row since 1973.
Two bills under consideration in Texas aim to address issues in the state’s death penalty. House Bill 2458 would allow defendants to appeal their death sentences if they can prove that race was a significant factor in the decision to seek or impose the death penalty. Statistical evidence of bias can be used to support such a claim. Similar bills, referred to as the Racial Justice Act, have been considered in other states. Testimony in favor of the bill mentioned the case of 
A new study regarding the use of the death penalty in Harris County, Texas, was released in conjunction with the filing of an appeal by Harris County death row inmate, Duane Buck. The research was conducted by Professor Raymond Paternoster of the University of Maryland, who examined over 500 murder cases in the county. The study found that, in cases with circumstances similar to Buck’s and during the time in which he was tried, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office sought the death penalty 3.5 times more often when the defendant was African-American than when the defendant was white. When the cases were submitted to Harris County (Houston) juries, the net result was a greater proportion of African-American defendants ended with death sentences than white defendants. Buck's case is also controversial because an 
A new animated film, The Last 40 Miles, will follow a death row inmate on his final journey from the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, to the death chamber in Huntsville. The film uses three forms of animation to tell the inmate's story, from his tragic childhood to the moment he is being escorted to the lethal injection chamber. The script was written by freelance journalist Alex Hannaford and is based on interviews he conducted with death row inmates for news stories. Hannaford described why he used the metaphor of the trip to the death chamber: "It struck me a long time ago that this was the last thing these men see as they're escorted from death row in Livingston to the death chamber at the Walls Unit in Huntsville. One of the last things they see is that big Texas sun rising over a vast lake. It's quite breathtaking." A trailer for the short film can be viewed 