Michelle Lyons

Michelle Lyons ( "lions"; born ) is an American crime reporter, author and former Public Information Director for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, best known for witnessing almost 300 executions in Texas.

Early life and education Michelle Lyons was born in Galveston, Texas in .Javier Cruz was executed in 1998, and Lyons was 22 when she witnessed his execution, Her father began his career as a reporter at The Daily News and met her mother while she was working as a records clerk at the Galveston Police Department. Lyons was raised in Galveston, attending the island's famous Ball High School until 1992, when her family relocated to Southern Illinois after her sophomore year for her father's job. She attended Benton Consolidated High School in Benton, Illinois, graduating in 1994 and then moving back to Texas to attend Texas A&M University in College Station where she would earn a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1997. In January 2000, she moved to covering the Texas Department of Criminal Justice as the prison beat reporter, at a time when the Item had one of five witness spots to cover every execution carried out in the State of Texas. of which Lyons witnessed 38. that in the early years of covering executions, she was skilled at compartmentalizing her emotions and staying neutral during her execution coverage although on occasions, she found herself empathizing more with particular individuals.

Lyons was 22 when she began regularly covering executions and she was the prison reporter during Texas' record-breaking 40 executions in 2000, during which then-Texas Governor George W. Bush was running for president, meaning international and national media were frequently in Huntsville and she received dozens of media requests from all over the world during that time, all wanting to interview the "young woman who watched executions," as well as an influx of hate mail and angry phone calls, some threatening and accusing her of appearing "cold," in interviews because she did not take a stance on the death penalty.

Lyons became a public information officer for TDCJ in November 2001 after she was approached by PIOs Larry Fitzgerald and Larry Todd about the position. She resigned entirely from the TDCJ in May 2012 after two additional false complaints were lodged at her, and specifically, that she was being required to keep her time in a way that was wholly different from both her current and former male coworkers, as well as against the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. The lawsuit was dismissed on summary judgment by U.S. District Judge David Hittner in 2013, with Lyons and her lawyers Nasim Ahmad and Delana Cline filing an appeal before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

In September 2014, the Fifth Circuit ruled in Lyons' favor, finding that both the district court and TDCJ neglected to mention a key witness affidavit in briefs to the appellate court. and the case was settled in November 2014 in Lyons' favor.

During her 2001–2012 tenure with the prison system, Michelle Lyons witnessed more than 280 executions by lethal injection,