About GRACE

The Gulf Region Advocacy Center, or GRACE, is organized for the purpose of supporting and providing quality representation to indigent persons charged with capital crimes in the state courts of Texas and Louisiana.  The Director and several of the Board members are veteran capital trial lawyers who participated in building the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center (LCAC) in New Orleans, Louisiana. The LCAC has developed an extremely successful method for investigating and presenting capital cases for indigent defendants. This method has been refined through dozens of capital cases in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. No such office or organization has ever existed in Texas. Texas has never had a public defender system. Though the Harris County District Attorney's Office has long maintained specialized units for capital trial and appellate work, never has there been a defender's office devoted exclusively to capital trials of the indigent where public interest lawyers can work together, share skills and materials, benefit from economies of scale, engage in systematic impact litigation and become specialists in indigent capital trials. GRACE is such an office.