Published Case Results
Postconviction work is exciting because we’re fighting for more than just the freedom of the client; we’re making law that can benefit everyone in the client’s situation. We can do more good in a single appeal case than in a hundred trial cases.
Most opinions are “not designated for publication,” which means that the court ordered the opinion not to be printed in the official books. An unpublished opinion is by definition not precedential—it only affects the client in that case.
The most important appellate opinions are published—printed in books by West Publishing.
With a published opinion, we make law. If we make a complex argument and a court of appeals agrees with us in a published opinion, other lawyers don’t need to make the entire argument; they can just point to the court of appeals opinion and say, “this is what the court of appeals says the law is.”
Here are a few of our most recent or most important published opinions:
Ex parte Estevez
Ex parte Estevez stopped the State from punishing someone twice for the same act—once as contempt and again as a crime—protecting a core safeguard against double punishment.
Ex parte Lo
One case freed dozens and cleared records. Our novel challenge rewrote Texas law and even sparked a constitutional change—read how it happened.
State v Cuarenta
Procedure is everything. We pushed past “no,” found the State’s procedural flaw, and fought a “small” speeding ticket like it mattered most, because to our client, it did.
Owens v State
Rare First Amendment win: Texas’s e-harassment law stands on its face but can’t punish this kind of speech—undermining most cases and exposing conflicts with Barton and Sanders.
Ex parte Cook
One-of-a-kind, fact-heavy win: we applied settled law to a massive record and held the State to account for what it did to Kerry. Also: Mark earned a nod in a John Grisham book.