Texas Law’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic represents Penn & Teller, the well-known magic act, who submitted a brief to that Court questioning the use of “investigative hypnosis” in a death-penalty case, Charles Don Flores v. the State of Texas. Mr. Flores is represented by Texas Law alum Gretchen Sween ’03, and the Court is likely to consider in June whether to order full briefing and oral argument.
Clinical Professors and Co-Directors Erin Busby and Lisa Eskow reached out to the duo after learning that Penn & Teller were skeptics about hypnosis, and the professors worked with Clinic students to craft an amicus brief on Penn & Teller’s behalf.
The brief argues that an “investigative hypnosis” session conducted by a police officer in a police station to reconfigure the memory of the prosecution’s key witness constitutes junk science and employs the same deceptive techniques Penn & Teller use on stage to trick audiences.
Read the news story, Two Magicians Warn the Supreme Court About Junk Science, originally published on April 16, 2026, in The Docket newsletter for the The New York Times.