Longtime UT law Professor Robert O. Dawson died from lung cancer on Feb. 26 at his family farm in Fentress. He was 65. Dawson founded UT’s Criminal Defense Clinic in 1974 and in 2003 started the school’s Center for Actual Innocence. He was a driving force behind the state bar’s creation of a Juvenile Law Section in 1987 (the section’s annual conference is named after him) and was responsible for rewriting the state’s juvenile justice laws in 1973 and 1995. A memorial service is scheduled for April 2 at 2pm in UT’s LBJ Auditorium. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, the Texas Center for Actual Innocence at the UT law school, or the Fentress-based American Association for Horsemanship Safety.

This article appears in March 4 • 2005.

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