Free Bobby Buckner

📊 When Justice Defers to Itself: The Numbers Behind Texas’ Broken Standard of Review In our last post, we exposed how Texas courts hide behind the phrase “in the light most favorable to the verdict.” It sounds like due process, but it’s really a policy of self-preservation — a way to defend convictions instead of defending the truth. Now, let’s look at the numbers that prove it. ⚖️ The Data Doesn’t Lie — Even When Courts Do According to data compiled by the National Registry of Exonerations (as of 2025), Texas has recorded over 450 exonerations since 1989 — the most of any state in the country. More than 70% of those wrongful convictions were based on witness misidentification or false testimony . And yet, nearly all of them were upheld on appeal before new evidence finally forced the courts to act. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals routinely applies the sufficiency standard established in Jackson v. Virginia (443 U.S. 307, 1979) — but the Texas interpretation goes f...

⚖️ The “Light Most Favorable” Lie: How Texas’ Standard of Review Protects Verdicts, Not Justice There’s a sickness in the system, and Texas law wrote it into doctrine. According to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, when reviewing a conviction for “sufficiency of the evidence,” appellate courts must view all the evidence “in the light most favorable to the verdict.” Sounds technical, maybe even neutral — but it’s not. It’s poison dressed as procedure. That phrase doesn’t mean justice. It means preservation. It means that when a man’s life or freedom hangs in the balance, the law itself tilts the scale — automatically — in favor of the State’s win. Think about that. When an appellate court reviews a case for sufficiency, they don’t ask, “Was this fair? Was the evidence truly enough?” They ask, “Could a jury have believed it, if they wanted to?” The law doesn’t demand proof beyond a reasonable doubt anymore — it just demands a story that sounds believable enough after the fact ....