Doug Becker is an Austin-based attorney who worked for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and the Texas Attorney General's Office before entering private practice in 1983. Becker has represented diverse clients at his litigation firm, including various state and law enforcement agencies. In this interview, Becker reflects on the loss of his cousin Jerry Walker, a police officer who was killed in the line of duty, and how this event shaped his development as a young lawyer. He opens up about eventually working on a class action lawsuit involving one of his cousin's alleged killers and the complicated emotions that followed. Becker has the perspective of having represented both law enforcement agencies and people incarcerated by those agencies and his reflections in this interview demonstrate how he maintains a lawyer-client relationship in all these scenarios. He has argued cases before the US Supreme Court and the Texas Supreme Court over the years and talks about specific cases at length. In this interview, he talks about finding a balance between his convictions against the death penalty and work that finds him representing law enforcement agencies.
Contributor | Contribuidor:
Becker, Doug (creator), Texas After Violence Project (contributor), Raymond, Virginia (interviewer), Chammah, Maurice (videographer), Semin-Lingo, Nancy (transcriber), Chammah, Maurice (transcriber), and Chammah, Maurice (proofreader)