Attend Events

TCADP is pleased to offer virtual programs as well as in-person events such as our Annual Conference. See below for details on upcoming and past events, as well as events hosted by partner organizations.

Upcoming Events

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). Our next selection is The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha. We will discuss the novel on Wednesday, March 12, 2025, at 7:00 PM CT. Register here. (Note: If you have signed up for previous book group meetings, you do not need to register again.)

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 is dedicating 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.

Join us on Tuesday, March 25, 2025, from 6:30 to 7:30 PM CT for a webinar featuring attorneys, professors, and friends of individuals who were sentenced to death for crimes that occurred when they were 18, 19, or 20 years old.

Learn more about our speakers and RSVP for the webinar here.

Past Events

“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.

Shaken Baby Syndrome: Examining the Evidence in the Shadow of an Execution
On Wednesday, October 2, 2024, the Cato Institute hosted a virtual event about shaken baby syndrome, featuring a panel of medical and forensic science experts who examined the issue in depth. With the first-in-the-nation execution of Robert Roberson based on the SBS/AHT diagnosis scheduled for October 17, 2024, in Texas, the trustworthiness of the diagnosis is increasingly relevant. Watch the recording.

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.