TCADP is pleased to offer virtual programs as well as in-person events, including the TCADP 2026 Annual Conference on Saturday, March 7, 2026, in Houston, Texas. See below for details on upcoming and past events, as well as events hosted by partner organizations.
Upcoming Events
Film screenings in Austin
César Fierro spent nearly 40 years on Texas Death Row, wrongfully convicted of the murder of a taxi driver in El Paso. Two documentary films by award-winning director Santiago Esteinou will bring Mr. Fierro’s extraordinary story to Austin in January 2026.
The first film, Los Años de Fierro (2014), concerns the wrongful conviction of Mr. Fierro, the result of a coerced confession brought about by Cd. Júarez and El Paso law enforcement torturing and threatening Mr. Fierro’s mother and stepfather, and the long legal struggle to overcome that conviction. The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IbHElvA714. Los Años de Fierro will be screened at the University of Texas School of Law on Tuesday, January 27, 2026, from 6 – 9 pm.
The second film, La Libertad de Fierro (2024), deals with Mr. Fierro’s release from Texas Death Row and deportation to Mexico in 2020, during the pandemic. The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtXHf9XqRLI
La Libertad de Fierro will be shown on Wednesday, January 28, 2026, at the Austin Film Society (AFS) Cinema, 6406 North IH35, from 7:00 – 9:30 pm, followed by a panel discussion. Participants will include director Santiago Esteinou, in person; César Fierro, by Zoom from Mexico City; Richard Burr, one of César Fierro’s lawyers; and moderator Michelle Pitcher, who has written extensively about the death penalty for the Texas Observer.
Co-sponsors of these events include the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS), Cine Las Americas, the Texas Observer, TCADP, the After Violence Project, and the Capital Punishment Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law.
TCADP 2026 Annual Conference
The TCADP 2026 Annual Conference: Overcoming Legacies; Reimagining Justice will take place on Saturday, March 7, 2026, from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM in Houston, Texas at the United Way Community Resource Center (50 Waugh Dr, Houston, Texas 77007). Registration is now open!
Past Events
On May 1, 2025, in conjunction with National Day of Prayer, TCADP, Texas CCATDP, partner organizations, and faith leaders came together for a virtual gathering of prayer and reflection. We stood united across faiths, affiliations, and cultures with one shared purpose: to intercede for life, mercy, and justice, and to put faith in action against capital punishment.
TCADP Webinar: Marking 20 Years of Roper v. Simmons and Redrawing the Line
Roper v. Simmons was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case in which the Justices ruled the death penalty for individuals under age 18 at the time of the crime is unconstitutional. The 5-4 decision, issued on March 1, 2005, was based on the idea that executing juveniles violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The decision spared the lives of 72 people nationwide, including 29 people in Texas who had been sentenced to death for crimes that occurred when they were 17 years old.
Yet many of the same reasons cited in the Roper decision, including lack of maturity or impulse control and what we know about brain development, apply to another group of individuals who should be exempt from the death penalty: Those ages 18 to 20 at the time of the crime.
TCADP dedicated the month of March to commemorating this important ruling and calling for the Texas Legislature to pass House Bill 2055 by State Representative Joe Moody, which would render individuals under the age of 21 at the time of the crime ineligible for the death penalty.
On March 25, 2025, we hosted a special webinar featuring attorneys, professors, students, and friends of individuals who were sentenced to death for crimes that occurred when they were 18, 19, or 20 years old.
Watch a recording of the webinar. (Passcode: #=t0lu$q)
“Is Justice Served? Legislative intervention and the death penalty”
On Friday, December 6, 2024, the Texas Tribune hosted “Is Justice Served? Legislative intervention and the death penalty”, a conversation with State Representatives Joe Moody and Jeff Leach about their efforts to stop Robert Roberson’s execution and their concerns about the science behind the shaken baby syndrome diagnosis that prompted a jury to sentence him to death. Watch the recording of this fascinating discussion.
Noose to Needle: The legacy of race and the death penalty in Texas
On May 30, 2024, TCADP co-hosted an important conversation about the intersection of race and the death penalty, featuring TCADP Deputy Director Tiara Cooper, Estelle Hebron-Jones, Director of Special Projects for Texas Defender Service (TDS), and Furonda Brasfield, Director of the Noose to Needle Project.
Participants learned about persistent and ongoing racial disparities in Harris County’s use of the death penalty, as documented in a report published by TDS earlier this year and exemplified by the case of Duane Buck. The panelists also explored the historical connections between lynching, racial terror, and the modern death penalty and shared their perspectives on intersectionality. Watch a recording of the webinar on YouTube.
Anatomy of a Wrongful Conviction: The Case of Charles Don Flores
Did you know someone can be convicted and sentenced to death without any evidence linking them to the crime scene? That’s what happened to Charles Don Flores, who has spent more than 20 years on death row for a crime he maintains he did not commit.
On June 8, 2023, TCADP, with support from local and national partners, hosted Anatomy of a Wrongful Conviction: The Case of Charles Don Flores in DeSoto, Texas. During the community forum, attendees heard from these speakers:
- Christopher Scott, a Dallas County exoneree
- Gretchen Sween, Flores’s appellate attorney
- Dr. John Wixted, an expert on memory and eyewitness identification
You can watch the live stream of the event here: https://www.facebook.com/cdf999299/videos. (This was recorded by a friend of Charles Flores who traveled from Colorado to be there!)
Bilingual panel discussion: “The Years of Fierro”
On May 12, 2021, EPF Media, TCADP, and Witness to Innocence hosted a special panel discussion related to the documentary film, “The Years of Fierro,” and the case of César Fierro, who spent four decades on Texas’s death row before his sentence was reduced. He was paroled in 2020. Throughout his ordeal, César maintained his innocence of the crime for which he was convicted in El Paso in 1980. The panel was conducted in English and Spanish and featured the filmmaker, Santiago Esteinou, two of César’s attorneys, Sandra Babcock and Dick Burr, and César himself. Watch and share the recording.
Past TCADP Book Group Selections
The Chamber by John Grisham
The River is Waiting by Wally Lamb
The Black Rose: Collected Poems by Terence Andrus
The Crying Tree by by Naseem Rakha
Bringing Ben Home: A Murder, a Conviction, and the Fight to Redeem American Justice by Barbara Bradley Hagerty
Little Shoes: The Sensational Depression-Era Murders That Became My Family’s Secret by Pamela Everett
He Called Me Sister: A True Story of Finding Humanity on Death Row by Suzanne Craig Robertson
Chain-Gang All- Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose
Confessions of an Innocent Man by David Dow
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs
We’ll Fly Away by Bryan Bliss
Crossing the River Styx: The Memoir of a Death Row Chaplain by Russ Ford with Charles Peppers and Todd C. Peppers
Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton
Death Row: The Final Minutes by Michelle Lyons
That Bird Has My Wings: The Autobiography of an Innocent Man on Death Row by Jarvis Jay Masters
Notes on an Execution: A Novel by Danya Kukafka
Corrections in Ink by Keri Blakinger
Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System by M. Chris Fabricant
A Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Penalty in 12 Essays by Marc Bookman
Reflections on the Guillotine by Albert Camus
Angel of Death Row: My Life as a Death Penalty Defense Lawyer by Andrea Lyon
Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions by John Grisham & Jim McCloskey
By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land by Rebecca Nagle
Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty by Maurice Chammah
How to Read a Book by Monica Wood
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
Infinite Hope: How Wrongful Conviction, Solitary Confinement, and 12 Years on Death Row Failed to Kill My Soul by Anthony Graves
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
End of Its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice by Brandon Garrett
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
The Guardians by John Grisham
Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam
Chasing Gideon: The Elusive Quest for Poor People’s Justice by Karen Houppert
Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal by Alexandra Natapoff
Narrative Change: How Changing the Story Can Transform Society, Business, and Ourselves by Hans Hansen
An Execution in the Family: One Son’s Journey by Robert Meeropol
River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey by Sister Helen Prejean
The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton
The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas by Anand Giridharadas