Terri Langford Born in Oceanside, California. Naturalized Texan. Comes by her tough love of government honestly. She majored in it at the University of Texas. First courtroom stories were in the Atticus Finch-like Lowndes County courthouse in Valdosta, Georgia, where two months into that first job for the Jacksonville-based Florida Times Union, she found herself covering a quadruple murder. Eventually moved to Jacksonville, covering social services and began unpacking the conflicted rules of government social work and public housing redevelopment for readers. Joined the Associated Press in Dallas and worked there and in Houston covering some of the state's biggest trials and complicated legal issues including the Branch Davidian standoff with ATF agents and the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper, Texas as well as witnessing several state executions. Worked for the Dallas Morning News and the Houston Chronicle, where she covered everything from airport security, civil courts and the 9/11 attacks to the strains of the Texas Child Protective Services system, the state's removal of more than 400 children from their polygamist parents in West Texas, the Allan Stanford Ponzi scheme trial and the world of Medicare fraud in Houston's private ambulance networks. Langford was named Texas Reporter of the Year in 2011 for her work on the connection between private ambulances in Houston and the non-regulated mental health clinics there. Before joining the Tribune in March 2014, she tried her hand at public radio, working for WNYC in Trenton, covering New Jersey government.
At a Thursday pre-trial hearing on Rick Perry's abuse of power indictment, all eyes will be on the Texas governor, who is expected to make his first appearance in court.
Full Story
Lawyers for a schizophrenic Texas death row inmate want their client evaluated before his scheduled execution next month.
Full Story
Gov. Rick Perry has no legal right to a transcript of what witnesses told the grand jury that indicted him, prosecutors told a judge Monday.
Full StoryFormer San Antonio gang member Miguel Angel Paredes was executed Tuesday for his role in a 2002 slaying that left three people dead.
Full Story
Gov. Rick Perry won't be making a Halloween court appearance after all. The Oct. 31 hearing that had been scheduled in Perry's criminal case has been rescheduled for Nov. 6 at 10 a.m., a court employee confirmed.
Full Story
Thanks to a wealthy and generous personal injury lawyer, Democrat Nicholas LaHood is mounting a well-funded challenge in his bid to unseat 16-year Republican incumbent Susan Reed as Bexar County district attorney.
A judge ruled Monday that Gov. Rick Perry will have to appear at an Oct. 31 hearing related to his indictment. On that date, visiting Judge Bert Richardson said, he would take up two matters raised by the governor's legal team.
Full Story
A federal ruling that Texas' strict voter ID law discriminates against minority voters has kicked off a rapid-fire legal race over whether photo identification will be required on Election Day this November.
Full Story
Defense lawyers for Gov. Rick Perry have asked that a transcript of the grand jury witness testimony that led to his indictment be made in the event there was information provided that could prove his innocence.
Full Story
A Texas parole commissioner has been indicted for tampering with a government record after a lawyer complained that at least five inmates were denied parole after she falsely said they had refused to sit for required interviews.
Full Story
Lawyers for Gov. Rick Perry on Friday requested that the indictment against the governor be dismissed, saying the special prosecutor in the case was never properly sworn in.
Full Story
While a federal judge in Corpus Christi mulls whether the state's requirement to show photo ID to cast a ballot violates the Voting Rights Act, a judge on the highest criminal appeals court in Texas has sued the state over its voter ID law.
Full Story
Siding with a decision made a year ago by a lower appeals court, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday refused to reinstate money-laundering convictions against former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
Full Story
The judge in Gov. Rick Perry's case ruled Friday that Perry does not have to appear at an Oct. 13 court hearing, according to the special prosecutor in the case. But that does not mean Perry has a pass to skip hearings.
Full Story
Michael McCrum, the special prosecutor who secured an indictment against Gov. Rick Perry in August, said he expected to reply in October to a challenge filed by Perry's legal team.
Full Story
