Texas

This time­line details some of its most con­se­quen­tial moments. Swipe to learn more.

Texas car­ries out its first exe­cu­tion by elec­tric chair with the exe­cu­tion of Charles Reynolds in Red River County.

Texas leg­is­la­ture rein­states the death penal­ty fol­low­ing Furman v. Georgia.

Texas becomes the first state to car­ry out an exe­cu­tion by lethal injec­tion with the exe­cu­tion of Charles Brooks, Jr. (aka Ahmad Adbul-Rahim).

Texas exe­cutes Mario Marquez, a pris­on­er who experts say had an IQ of 65 and the adap­tive skills of a 7‑year-old.

Texas imple­ments life with­out parole (LWOP) sen­tenc­ing in cap­i­tal cas­es, becom­ing the 37^th state to adopt this option.

The Supreme Court, in its rul­ing in Miller-El v. Dretke, grants habeas relief to a Black pris­on­er after find­ing that Texas pros­e­cu­tors uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly exclud­ed Black peo­ple from serv­ing on his cap­i­tal jury. The Court found broad­er pat­terns of prac­tice, includ­ing a train­ing man­u­al that instruct­ed pros­e­cu­tors how to use pre­emp­tive strikes to remove Black jurors and avoid detec­tion, sup­port­ing a con­clu­sion of inten­tion­al racial discrimination.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in its rul­ing in Panetti v. Quarterman, estab­lished that for death-sen­tenced pris­on­er Scott Panetti to be found com­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed, it was not enough for him to be mere­ly ​“aware” of his pend­ing exe­cu­tion, but rather that he must have a ​“ratio­nal under­stand­ing” of his exe­cu­tion and the rea­son for it. In 2023, Mr. Panetti was found incom­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed by a fed­er­al court. He died of nat­ur­al caus­es on death row in Texas in 2025. 

The U.S. Supreme Court decides Skinner v. Switzer, estab­lish­ing that death-sen­tenced pris­on­er Hank Skinner may use a 42 U.S.C. §1983 civ­il rights law­suit to request post-con­vic­tion DNA test­ing of crime-scene evidence.

Governor Rick Perry signs a bill known as the ​“Michael Morton Act” that requires pros­e­cu­tors to open their files to defen­dants and keep records of the evi­dence they dis­close. The act is named after Michael Morton, who was exon­er­at­ed by DNA evi­dence 24 years after he was sen­tenced to life in prison in 1987.

The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Trevino v. Thaler that when a state’s pro­ce­dur­al frame­work, by rea­son of its design and oper­a­tion, makes it high­ly unlike­ly that a defen­dant will have a mean­ing­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to raise on direct appeal a claim that his tri­al coun­sel pro­vid­ed inef­fec­tive assis­tance, the good cause excep­tion excus­ing pro­ce­dur­al default rec­og­nized in Martinez v. Ryan applies. 

SB 1292 is signed into law requir­ing DNA test­ing of evi­dence that can rea­son­ably be used to either estab­lish the iden­ti­ty of the per­son who may have com­mit­ted the crime or exclude some­one as hav­ing com­mit­ted the crime, before seek­ing the death penalty.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Buck v. Davis, orders a new tri­al for Duane Buck, a Texas death-sen­tenced pris­on­er , after his own lawyer pre­sent­ed tes­ti­mo­ny from a psy­chol­o­gist who told the jury Mr. Buck was more like­ly to com­mit future acts of vio­lence because he is Black. Writing for the major­i­ty, Chief Justice John Roberts stat­ed that “[o]ur law pun­ish­es peo­ple for what they do, not who they are”. Mr. Buck was sub­se­quent­ly resen­tenced to life in prison. 

The Supreme Court, in Moore v. Texas, directs Texas courts to recon­sid­er the stan­dard for deter­min­ing intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty in cap­i­tal cas­es, assert­ing that the state’s unsci­en­tif­ic approach cre­ates an ​“unac­cept­able risk that per­sons with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty will be exe­cut­ed.” After Texas courts refused to over­turn his death sen­tence, in 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that Bobby James Moore is a per­son with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties and may not be executed. 

An inves­tiga­tive news report reveals that, for three-and-a-half-years, Texas has been pur­chasing exe­cu­tion drugs from a Houston-based com­pound­ing phar­macy with health and safety violations.

After years of lit­i­ga­tion, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice was forced to allowed spir­i­tu­al advi­sors cho­sen by the death-sen­tenced indi­vid­ual to accom­pa­ny them in the death chamber.

The nation’s longest serv­ing death row pris­on­er, Raymond Riles, is resen­tenced to life.

The Supreme Court, in Ramirez v. Collier, rules that Texas like­ly vio­lates the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and the First Amendment by not allow­ing Henry Ramirez’s pas­tor to touch and pray over him dur­ing his lethal injection execution.

43 pages of emails, text mes­sages, and state­ments from prison staff released by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in response to a pub­lic records request about the 2021 exe­cu­tion of Quinton Jones under the Texas Public Information Act reveal ​“con­fu­sion and lack of train­ing,” leav­ing Texas ​“woe­ful­ly unpre­pared to car­ry out and exe­cu­tion,” accord­ing to the American Civil Liberties Union.