Resources

Regulation of investigators

• Texas Occupations Code Chapter 1702 (Private Security Act)
• Texas DPS Private Security laws and rules (Texas Administrative Code Title 37, Chapter 35)
• Texas DPS Regulatory Services Division, Private Security

Conduct and access to information

• Driver's Privacy Protection Act (DPPA), 18 U.S.C. § 2721
• Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA). Federal Trade Commission.
• Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Federal Trade Commission.
• Texas Penal Code Chapter 16 (interception, 16.02; tracking devices, 16.06)
• Texas Government Code Chapter 423 (unmanned aircraft)

• About Texas Courts (Texas Judicial Branch)
• Texas Public Information Act, Government Code Chapter 552
• Texas Attorney General, Open Government and Public Information Handbook
• Texas State Library and Archives Commission records retention schedules
• Freedom of Information Act (FOIA.gov)

Articles and Podcasts

• HuffPost: Indigent defense and the death penalty in Harris County. A 2023 investigation into how Harris County's flat-fee appointed-counsel system produces poor representation in capital cases.
• Texas Observer: Harris County Sends 15 Times More Black Men to Death Row than White. Reporting on racial disparity in Harris County capital sentencing.
• The Yogurt Shop Murders (Austin, 1991). All four men accused, two of them convicted on false confessions, were exonerated in 2026 after DNA identified a deceased serial killer. Coverage: CNN and CBS News.
• Murderville, Texas (Season 2, Charles Raby case). Investigative podcast from The Intercept.

Books

Book links go to Bookshop.org, which gives most of its profit margin to independent bookstores. Liberty Investigations earns nothing from them. Every title is available from Amazon and through most public libraries.

• Getting Life by Michael Morton. A memoir of wrongful conviction in Texas.
• Let the Lord Sort Them by Maurice Chammah. A history of the rise and fall of the death penalty in Texas.
• American Prison by Shane Bauer. An undercover account of the business of incarceration.
• Corrections in Ink by Keri Blakinger. A memoir of addiction, incarceration, and journalism.
• Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. Capital and wrongful-conviction work, from the founder of EJI.
• The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton. Memoir of an Alabama death row exoneree.
• Convicting the Innocent by Brandon Garrett. What goes wrong in wrongful convictions, drawn from DNA exonerations.
• Actual Innocence by Scheck, Neufeld, and Dwyer. From the founders of the Innocence Project.
• Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System by M. Chris Fabricant. On discredited forensic methods and the convictions built on them.
• Autopsy of a Crime Lab by Brandon Garrett. On the reliability problems in forensic evidence.
• The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington. Forensic misconduct and the wrongful convictions it produced.
• Gideon's Trumpet by Anthony Lewis. The case that guaranteed the right to counsel.
• Charged by Emily Bazelon. On prosecutorial power and how it shapes outcomes.
• The New Jim Crow (10th Anniversary Edition) by Michelle Alexander. On incarceration as both discrimination and an industry.

Reports and References

• Arbitrary and Capricious: Racial Disparities in Harris County's Pursuit of Death Sentences. Texas Defender Service.
• Death by Design, Parts 1 and 2. The Wren Collective, on court-appointed capital representation in Harris County.
• Racial Disparities in the Capital of Capital Punishment (Scott Phillips study). Death Penalty Information Center.
• A State of Denial: Texas Justice and the Death Penalty. Death Penalty Information Center.
• Race and the Death Penalty. National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
• Texas Death Penalty Facts. Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
• Texas Indigent Defense Commission