Attend Events

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.

Bexar County District Attorney Candidate Debate
District Attorney (DA) candidates are on the ballot in the 2026 Texas Primary Election in Tarrant, Dallas and Bexar counties, among others. In Bexar County, incumbent DA Joe Gonzales is not seeking re-election. In the Republican primary, Ashley Foster is running unopposed while eight candidates are running in the Democrat race. Those eight candidates will participate in a debate on Tuesday, February 3, at the Carver Community Cultural Center. The event is hosted by the San Antonio Report and Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. and tickets are free for those who register in advance online. Learn about all of the Bexar County DA candidates.

TCADP General Membership Meeting
TCADP’s General Membership Meeting will take place on Zoom on Thursday, February 19, 2026, from 6:30 to 7:30 PM Central Time. Attendees will hear a report on TCADP’s impact in 2025 and participate in the election of new board members. We’ll then break into small groups for discussions led by TCADP Board Members. If you have questions about your membership status, email Executive Director Kristin Cuellar at kristin@tcadp.org.

Bryan Stevenson at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth
Brite Divinity School’s Center for Theology and Justice, in collaboration with TCU’s Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice, presents The 2nd Annual Dream Justice Event on Monday, February 23, 2026, at 6:00pm CST. The Green Chair featured speaker is Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. The event is free and open to the public. Register here.

TCADP Book Group
The TCADP Book Group meets every six to eight weeks on Zoom and reads a mix of fiction, non-fiction, and memoirs (see below for a list of everything we’ve read together). Here are the next two reading selections:

– To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. We will meet to discuss this classic novel on Wednesday, February 25, 2026, at 7:00 PM on Zoom.

– Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King. We will discuss this book in early April (meeting date TBD).

Register here to receive book group announcements and meeting links.(Note: If you have signed up for previous book group meetings, you do not need to register again.)

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). Register today!

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.