The TCADP 2025 Annual Conference: Becoming Catalysts for Change took place on February 22, 2025, in Austin, Texas with 120 supporters and guests from across the state, as well as friends from Georgia and New Mexico. It was wonderful to see familiar faces and meet those attending their first TCADP conference (at least half of the participants!). Thanks to everyone who joined us for our signature statewide event!
During the day, we heard from three journalists who cover death penalty cases, as well as from capital defense attorneys, faith leaders, and advocates. We honored two people who were instrumental in stopping the execution of Robert Roberson last October, as well as individuals and organizations who have made meaningful contributions towards furthering the cause of abolition. And we heard from State Representative John Bucy, who gave an impassioned keynote address, concluding that “Ending the death penalty is not only the right thing to do, it is the only thing to do.”
See below for more information about our 2025 keynote speaker, panelists, and award recipients.
Generous support for the TCADP 2025 Annual Conference was provided by the Judith Filler Foundation and by these individuals and organizations: Professor Ana Otero; Fellowship Southwest (Underwriters); Bob Michael and John Mimbela (Champions); Angelle Adams; Virginia Greenway; Dr. Kimberly Harrison; Amanda Hernandez; and Michael Wong (Sponsors).
2025 Keynote Speaker
State Representative John H. Bucy III is a native Texan and small business owner serving District 136 in the Texas House of Representatives. First elected in 2018, John represents part of Williamson County, including Northwest Austin, Cedar Park, Round Rock, and the Brushy Creek area. John was named Vice Chair of the House Committee on Elections and appointed to the House Committee on Higher Education and the House Committee on Health Care Reform, Select for the 88th Legislative Session. He previously served on the Constitutional Rights and Remedies, Select Committee; the Culture, Recreation & Tourism Committee; and the Transportation Committee.
John is Chair of the Young Texans Legislative Caucus and Vice Chair of the Innovation & Technology Caucus. As a member of the House Criminal Justice Reform Caucus, he was integrally involved in efforts to stop the execution of Robert Roberson in October 2024. In the 89th Legislative Session, he is the author of House Bill 454, which calls for the abolition of the death penalty.
John lives with his family in Northwest Austin.
2025 Panelists
David Martin Davies is a veteran journalist with more than 30 years of experience covering Texas, the border, and Mexico. Davies is the host of “The Source,” an hour-long live call-in news program that airs on KSTX at noon Monday through Thursday. Since 1999, he has been the host and producer of “Texas Matters,” a weekly radio news magazine and podcast that looks at the issues, events, and people in the Lone Star State. Davies’ reporting has been featured on National Public Radio, American Public Media’s “Marketplace,” and the BBC. He has written for The San Antonio Light, the San Antonio Express-News, the Texas Observer, and other publications and is the author and creator of the comic “San Antonio Secret History” and co-author of the book “San Antonio 365.”
Bekah Stolhandske McNeel is a native of San Antonio, Texas, where she works as a journalist. Her work has appeared in Texas Monthly, Sojourners, The Guardian, The Trace, and the Texas Tribune, among other outlets. Known for her ability to communicate the high stakes of politics and policy and bring clarity to complex systems, Bekah keeps the human beings most affected at the front of her coverage. She is a graduate of the London School of Economics, where she earned a MSc in Media Studies. She is married to Lewis McNeel, an architect with Lake | Flato. They have two young children who, while they do not yet have careers, are very busy.
Michelle Pitcher is a staff writer at the Texas Observer covering criminal justice. She received her master’s in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley and was part of the team at The Marshall Project that won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. Her reporting has been featured on NPR, FiveThirtyEight, and the Dallas Morning News, among other outlets. Michelle was born and raised in Dallas and is now based in Austin.
2025 Award Recipients
TCADP’s Appreciation Awards are bestowed upon individuals and organizations who have made meaningful contributions towards raising awareness of death penalty issues and furthering the cause of abolition. We are pleased to present awards in 2025 to the Friends Meeting of Austin and Shirl Solomon.
Friends Meeting of Austin was founded in 1948. Since the 1990s, the Meeting has advocated against capital punishment through protest and legislative engagement. The Meeting also began writing and visiting prisoners in the 1990s and in 2000 extended its Sanctuary Declaration to protect those targeted by the juvenile death penalty.
Since 2005, the Meeting Clerk has sent a letter requesting clemency to the Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor responding to every execution date. Members regularly stand vigil outside the Texas State Capitol during executions. They also organize greeting card signing events, memorials, and fundraisers for people incarcerated on death row and their families.
Around 10 members currently maintain close ties with people on Texas’ death row. Meeting members founded and have worked with the Texas After Violence Project and the Judith Filler Foundation. Friends Meeting of Austin remains committed to ending the death penalty and supporting those impacted by it. With this award, TCADP recognizes the vital friendships members of the Meeting have provided to many individuals on death row over the years.
Shirl A.P. Solomon is on a mission to make a difference. The New Orleans native arrived in Texas — along with thousands of others — in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. After seeing how North Texans opened their doors, hearts, and resources to her and the other evacuees, she made a firm choice to dedicate the second half of her life to establishing and engaging organizations with a mission to be transformative in the lives of people. Dr. Fredrick Haynes and Friendship West Baptist Church in Dallas were instrumental in her transformation.
Sadly, the winds of Katrina and the waters of Rita didn’t mark the end of the pain to her family. Shirl’s two-year-old grandson, DeShaun, was killed as a result of domestic violence. “Living in New Orleans, you expect hurricanes, but you don’t expect to lose everything because of one,” Shirl said, “And, you never expect to bury a child and certainly not a grandchild.”
Shirl’s commitment to helping to end domestic violence and abolish the death penalty, as well as her love for children, prompted her to return to school at age 50. She graduated at the top of her class at the Florida Institute of Technology, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice. Shirl is currently a Client Advocate at SafeHaven of Tarrant County. In this capacity, she brings her commitment to service into the lives of women seeking shelter from Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). She educates and influence families, infusing them with values and ideals to help them transform— and never have to return to a domestic violence shelter.
TCADP is grateful for Shirl’s dedication and transformative leadership. We particularly appreciate the way she takes TCADP with her everywhere she goes, with a sign-up sheet in hand! Shirl has played a key role in TCADP’s activities in DFW over the past two years and we are grateful for her ability to convey our mission to people with a sense of passion and connectivity.
TCADP’s Courage Award recognizes individuals who have encountered the death penalty firsthand and shared their experiences with decision makers and the public at large. We are pleased to present the 2025 Courage Award to Rev. Brian Wharton, in recognition of his selfless advocacy for Robert Roberson.
Rev. Brian Wharton is a native Texan, born in Jacksonville. He is also an Army kid, thus well-traveled. Brian graduated from Sam Houston State, the University of Texas at Tyler, and Asbury Theological Seminary and is a U.S. Army veteran. After the Army, he served as a police officer in Palestine, Texas, retiring as the Assistant Chief after 14 years. Currently, Brian serves as an ordained Elder in the United Methodist Church, pastoring First UMC in Onalaska, Texas.
Brian has been one of the staunchest advocates for Robert Roberson, after being the lead detective who investigated the death of Roberson’s daughter as a homicide in 2002 and then testified against him during Roberson’s 2003 trial, which resulted in a death sentence. Brian now believes Roberson is completely innocent of causing the death of his two-year-old daughter, Nikki, as explained in a piece published by the Dallas Morning News in May 2024: “For 20 years, I have thought that something went very wrong in Roberson’s case and feared that justice was not served. If there is no movement to correct this injustice, I fear myself and others will carry our guilt eternally.”
Earlier this year, Brian visited Roberson for the first time on death row, an extraordinary encounter captured by the New York Times in an Opinion Video that has been viewed more than 260K times and in which Brian apologizes to Roberson for the role he played in his wrongful conviction and receives his forgiveness. Brian has also participated in media interviews and provided testimony to the Texas House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence to raise awareness about this miscarriage of justice.
It is extremely rare for anyone in the criminal justice system to admit to a mistake and even rarer for them to go to the lengths Brian has gone to repair the harm and hold himself accountable. TCADP is grateful for Brian’s tireless and courageous advocacy in the days leading up to and following Roberson’s scheduled execution on October 17, 2024, as well as for his commitment to personal integrity and the truth.
The David P. Atwood Founder’s Award was established by the TCADP Board of Directors in 2011 in honor of Houstonian Dave Atwood, who established our organization in 1995. The award is given at the discretion of the TCADP Board and honors those who have made a lifelong commitment to justice. TCADP is honored to present the 2025 Founder’s Award to defense attorney Gretchen Sween in recognition of her zealous advocacy for Robert Roberson, Charles Flores, and other individuals on death row.
“Tireless” and “indefatigable” are inadequate descriptions of Gretchen Sween’s complete commitment to her clients. What she does every day is nothing short of miraculous, especially as a solo practitioner often working pro bono. There are many other superlatives we could use to describe Gretchen’s commitment, passion, eloquence, and drive.
Gretchen initially worked to highlight the flawed arguments used to justify the death penalty while teaching introductory philosophy classes to undergraduates. After she decided to change career paths and became a law student at the University of Texas School of Law, she participated in the law school’s Capital Punishment Clinic then led by renowned capital defense attorney Rob Owen and worked as a research assistant for Professor Jordan Steiker, an expert in death penalty jurisprudence.
Thereafter, while practicing civil trial and appellate law at prestigious firms, Gretchen worked on numerous pro bono appeals in capital cases, including authoring amicus briefs in support of petitioners to the Supreme Court of the United States. She eventually took up the direct representation of an indigent individual, Raphael Holiday, litigating his right to obtain substitute counsel after being abandoned by counsel on the brink of an execution date. That experience changed the trajectory of her life. Since late 2015, she has been dedicated to defending indigent individuals in death penalty cases full time.
That dedication was on full display last year as Gretchen sought to stop the execution of Robert Roberson, an innocent father with Autism who has spent more than 20 years on death row in Texas for a crime that never occurred, and a conviction based on the outdated and now debunked Shaken Baby hypothesis. No court has considered overwhelming new medical and scientific evidence that Robert’s chronically ill daughter, Nikki, died because of serious health issues, including undiagnosed pneumonia.
Thanks to the efforts of a talented team that rallied behind Gretchen in her fight for Roberson, as well as a brave bipartisan group of lawmakers, Roberson received a temporary stay of execution on October 17, 2024. Gretchen continues to advocate for a new trial and for review of the new scientific and medical evidence establishing Roberson’s innocence. Meanwhile, she strives to find creative ways to work in the community to expose the significant flaws in the cases of other clients on death row, including Charles Flores, another man with a strong claim of innocence whose new evidence no court has yet been willing to consider. The TCADP Board considers her most deserving of this recognition and of our profound gratitude for her dedication to justice.
Comments From Past Participants
“Great connections; heard different perspectives based on differing experiences with death penalty; learn new updates and facts about capital punishment.”
2024 Conference Participant
“Loved the passion of those working in this important issue, especially the panelists, and the diversity of the participants.”
2024 Conference Participant
“The TCADP conference helped me put faces, real people, and real emotions to a general cause. I knew people were fighting behind the scenes to abolish the death penalty in Texas despite it being an uphill battle, but it was so important for me to see the lawyers, advocates, volunteers, journalists, and exonerated former defendants/victims in person. I heard their stories, their pain and raw emotions while talking about the injustice of our judicial system.”
2023 Conference Participant
“The bar is set very high. It will be hard to do any better next time. Thanks so much.”
2022 Conference Participant
“In a time of webinar and Zoom fatigue, it was one of the first conferences in a while that I stayed for the whole thing. It was good to hear from former death row persons.”
2021 Conference Participant
“Incredibly informative, I have never attended a conference and I am so grateful for this experience and efforts to abolish the death penalty.”
2020 Conference Participant
“I’m sending this note to thank you and TCADP for the informative conference today. I attended with my father who invited me. I knew very little about this issue before today and found the conference to be enlightening. The panel discussion, keynote and awards, and the workshops were interesting, thought provoking, and informative. The facility was very nice and comfortable, and the food was excellent. It was a well-organized and interesting day, and I appreciate all the work that you and your group did to make this happen.”
2020 Conference Participant
“This was the first TCADP conference I have attended, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. The truth is that I was quite impressed. It was well run, well staffed, and well attended.”
2019 Conference Participant
“Your work to make it so seamless made people connect in amazing ways. Those connections will last long after this event.”
2019 Conference Participant