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HOUSTON (AP) – Mourners in Houston paid tribute to the late U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner of Texas as he lay in state at city hall Tuesday, part of a week of public events to honor the Democratic lawmaker and former mayor.

Turner, 70, died on March 5, just weeks into his first term in the House and only hours after attending President Donald Trump’s address to Congress in Washington. His family said he died at his home following health complications.

Residents observed a memorial at Houston City Hall, where Turner served as mayor for eight years before being elected to Congress in November. Houston Mayor John Whitmire made brief remarks to mourners and the Houston Symphony performed while visitors paid their respects.

“Sylvester knew each and every community, and he treated everyone with equality and inclusion,” Whitmire said. “That’s what made him really special. He brought that public service and that message across not only our great city, but our great state.”

Turner had filled the House seat held by longtime Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who died in July. Prior to becoming mayor, Turner served as a legislator in the Texas House of Representatives for 27 years.

Turner is also scheduled to lie in state at the Texas Capitol beginning Thursday. His funeral is scheduled for Saturday in Houston.

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has not yet announced when a special election will be held for Turner’s seat.

AMARILLO (AP) – A federal appeals court has tossed an Amarillo woman’s death sentence after it found that local prosecutors had failed to reveal that their primary trial witness was a paid informant.

With a 2-1 decision, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals last week sent Brittany Marlowe Holberg’s 1998 murder conviction back down to the trial court to decide how to proceed.

Holberg has been on death row for 27 years. In securing her conviction in 1998, Randall County prosecutors heavily relied on testimony from a jail inmate who was working as a confidential informant for the City of Amarillo police. That informant recanted her testimony in 2011, but neither a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals or a federal district court found that prosecutors had violated Holberg’s constitutional right to a fair trial.

The appeals court disagreed, saying that the informant was critical to the jury’s determination of guilt and that the prosecution violated Holberg’s due process rights by hiding information that, according to a landmark U.S. Supreme court ruling, must be disclosed. Writing for the majority, judge Patrick E. Higginbotham cast Holberg’s case as a blight on the criminal justice system.

“We pause only to acknowledge that 27 years on death row is a reality dimming the light that ought to attend proceedings where a life is at stake, a stark reminder that the jurisprudence of capital punishment remains a work in progress,” wrote Higginbotham, a Ronald Reagan appointee.

Holberg was sentenced to death by an Amarillo jury when she was 23 years old. The jury found her guilty of murdering A.B. Towery, an 80-year-old man and former client of Holberg, a sex worker. During trial, Holberg asserted that she acted in self-defense and that she stabbed Towery because she feared for her life and sought to protect herself after he struck her on the back of the head and refused to relent.

The prosecution, however, presented testimony from Holberg’s jail cellmate Vickie Marie Kirkpatrick, who alleged that Holberg had admitted to killing Towery “in order to get money” and said she “would do it all over again for more drugs.”

Kirkpatrick was at the time working as a confidential informant for the City of Amarillo police, a fact prosecutors did not disclose. They instead presented Kirkpatrick as a “disinterested individual who ‘wanted to do the right thing,’” Higginbotham wrote.

Holberg had experienced severe and repeated sexual abuse during her childhood and fell into a crack cocaine addiction. She turned to sex work to support her addiction, according to court documents.

On Nov. 13, 1996, she had a minor traffic accident and then sought refuge in Towery’s apartment. A heated argument turned violent, leaving Towery dead with part of a lamp lodged within his throat. Holberg left the apartment cut, bruised and bleeding from her head where Towery struck her.

While in jail, the Randall County District Attorney’s Office approached multiple inmates to question them about Holberg, offering them a deal in exchange for testimony. Kirkpatrick, who was placed in the same cell as Holberg, produced a statement detailing an alleged admission from Holberg. That same day, Kirkpatrick was released on bond.

In a lone dissent, circuit judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, a Donald Trump appointee, wrote that the jury did not solely rely on Kirkpatrick’s testimony to reach their decision of guilt.

“The jury was presented with graphic physical evidence that Holberg sadistically butchered a sick old man—with a lamp rammed down his throat as the coup de grâce,” Duncan wrote. “That evidence doomed Holberg’s self-defense theory and there is no chance that impeaching Kirkpatrick would have resurrected it.”

Randall County District Attorney Robert Love, who was the assistant district attorney when Holberg’s case was first prosecuted, said in an emailed statement that he was “disappointed” by the 5th Circuit’s ruling. He declined to comment further on the case until the Texas Office of the Attorney General decides how to proceed. “They are currently discussing the legal options available,” Love said.

Holberg’s attorneys didn’t immediately respond to The Texas Tribune’s request for comment on Monday. A Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesperson said the agency had no comment on Holberg’s case. Holberg is currently being held at the Patrick L. O’Daniel Unit, a Gatesville prison that houses females on death row, among other inmates.

Texas leads the country in executions and is among the top three in imposing death sentences. The state’s use of capital punishment has waned, however, and the number of people on death row has dropped by more than half over the past twenty five years. There are 174 people on Texas’ death row, and seven of them are women.

SAN ANTONIO – The San Antonio Express-News reports The woman convicted of killing Selena Quintanilla believes she has served her time as her parole eligibility fast approaches, a relative recently told the New York Post. Yolanda Saldívar, a San Antonio native, was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years for the murder of the 23-year-old “Queen of Tejano” at a Corpus Christi hotel on March 31, 1995. Saldívar is now 64 years old. The relative, who was not named in the article, told the Post that Saldívar “feels like she’s a political prisoner at this point,” adding, “Enough is enough.” Saldívar was the president of Quintanilla’s fan club before she killed the singer after the star confronted her over embezzlement alegations, which Saldívar has denied. Quintanilla had conquered the Spanish music scene and was on the verge of an English crossover before she was shot and killed two weeks before her 24th birthday.

AUSTIN – The San Antonio Express-News says Republican state leaders pushing a private school voucher plan have emphasized it would transform the face of education in Texas. They also say its cost would be limited to $1 billion for the first year. But projections from the nonpartisan Legislative Budget Board show demand for the program providing students with taxpayer funds to subsidize homeschooling or private education options could quickly outpace that initial investment, pressuring lawmakers to pour more and more money into it, while pulling millions from public schools. According to the LBB, demand for the program is projected to grow from $1 billion worth of vouchers for its first year of operation in 2027 to $3.2 billion the following year, then $3.8 billion and $4.6 billion by 2030. In other words, the $1 billion budget line on this biennium’s state budget could grow to more than $8 billion over the two-year period up for approval by the Legislature in 2029 as more and more students seek a voucher.

State Sen. Brandon Creighton, a Conroe Republican carrying his chamber’s version of the voucher bill, Senate Bill 2, has described the fiscal note as a “fairy tale” because lawmakers would need to sign off on any future funding increases. “Senate Bill 2 is entirely subject to a future appropriations process and the Legislature making a decision to grow the population of students served,” he said during a committee hearing earlier this year. Although the program’s initial investment would be set at $1 billion under Creighton’s bill, there are other pathways to grow it, even without lawmakers’ support. Gov. Greg Abbott, the state’s biggest voucher proponent, has been able to circumvent the Legislature for funding increases in the past, namely with his ongoing border security initiative, Operation Lone Star, which began with an appropriation from the Legislature of less than $3 billion. Abbott grew the program by billions more while the Legislature was out of session by moving money amongst state agencies with the approval of a small group of lawmakers, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the House speaker. Critics warn the same thing could happen with vouchers. “What will most likely happen based on what we’ve seen in other states, to start drawing down those dollars… it’s really unlimited,” said Jaime Puente, a policy analyst with the left-leaning group Every Texan who is critical of vouchers. “It’s really an unlimited amount of funding, an unlimited amount of seats that people will be advertised to with state dollars.”