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Patrick O'Daniel Unit

Women's prison in Gatesville, Texas, U.S.

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 27, 2026
Entity authorityQ6925397 ↗
Source-derived summary

Patrick L. O'Daniel Unit (formerly the Mountain View Unit) is a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison housing female offenders in Gatesville, Texas. The unit, with about 97 acres (39 ha) of land, is located 4 miles (6.4 km) north of central Gatesville on Farm to Market Road 215. The prison is located in a 45-minute driving distance from Waco. In addition to its other functions, O'Daniel Unit houses the state's female death row inmates.

Death row offenders are housed separately from the rest of the prisoners in single-person cells measuring 60 square feet (5.6 m2), with each cell having a window. They do not have recreation individually. Some are allowed to watch television, though this is dependent upon agreeing to work for free, and all have a radio.

While O'Daniel functions as the women's death row, executions take place in the Huntsville Unit. Karla Faye Tucker, executed February 3, 1998, was the first woman to be executed in Texas since 1863. The most recent female to be executed was Lisa Coleman, executed on September 17, 2014.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Patrick O'Daniel Unit” as women's prison in Gatesville, Texas, U.S. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Patrick, O'Daniel and Unit.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1998, 1863, 2014—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Patrick, O'Daniel and Unit providing the first useful test.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Patrick O'Daniel Unit”, the useful work is to connect “women's prison in Gatesville, Texas, U.S” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6925397. The first chronological checks are 1998, 1863 and 2014.

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This entry incorporates text from “Patrick O'Daniel Unit” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.