Now in Session: The
87th Legislature gaveled in Tuesday at the
Texas State Capitol amid heightened security following last week s attack on the U.S. Capitol building. A small gathering of protesters – some armed militia, some anti-vaxxers – were also on hand. Read our Lege preview.
Field Hospital Activated: As Central Texas continued surge in cases and hospitalizations puts pressure on area hospitals, an
alternate care site at the
Austin Convention Center opened on Tuesday to deal with overflow. Read more.
Vaccine Town Halls:
Austin Public Health is conducting virtual town halls in English (Jan. 13, viewable on APH s Facebook page and ATXN) and Spanish (Jan. 14, viewable on the Univision 62 Facebook page, website, and app) to discuss
Travis County District Attorney José Garza has set a March 30 deadline for himself to ask a grand jury to consider charges against officers in the deaths of Javier Ambler and Michael Ramos, two cases that the new DA has set as a priority for his administration.
On Thursday, Garza released a list of about two dozen cases involving law enforcement officers that could be presented to a grand jury in the future, including six cases that involved the death of a civilian as well as 10 separate complaints from individuals who Austin police hit with beanbag rounds during the May 31 downtown protest against police brutality.
This article originally appeared on ProPublica.
The Trump administration is charging ahead with plans for three back-to-back executions this week, even though two of the condemned prisoners are sick with COVID-19 and multiple courts have objected to the government s aggressive maneuvers.
Despite outstanding legal obstacles in all three cases, the executions remain on the calendar. The three prisoners fate will ultimately be decided by President Donald Trump and the Supreme Court. Neither has intervened to stop the 10 executions carried out since July.
In their determination to kill Nos. 11, 12 and 13 capping an unprecedented string of federal executions after a 17-year hiatus Justice Department officials scheduled executions in defiance of court orders, flouted pandemic safety measures and lied about it, and demanded that judges yield to the administration s self-imposed deadline of Jan. 20.
TERRE HAUTE â After a flurry of last-minute court orders, hours of uncertainty and one final plea to reconsider her competency, Lisa Montgomery became the first woman executed by the federal government in 67 years early Wednesday.
Montgomery, 52, was executed by lethal injection at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute. Her time of death was 1:31 a.m., more than seven hours after her originally scheduled time of execution.
As both sides filed appeal after appeal to tip the scales in their favor, Montgomery spent her final moments in a cell just steps away from the execution chamber.
As a curtain was raised in the execution chamber, Montgomery looked momentarily bewildered as she glanced at journalists peering at her from behind thick glass in the observation room, according to the Associated Press. At the start of the execution process, an executioner standing over Montgomeryâs shoulder leaned over, gently removed her face mask and asked if she had any last words,