Amicus Groups Ask Supreme Court to Overturn Texas Appeals Court Refusal to Grant New Trial to Death-Row Prisoner Convicted Based on DNA Testimony Prosecutor and Trial Court Agree Was False

Three groups of fair jus­tice advo­cates have filed friend-of-the-court briefs ask­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to review and over­turn a Texas appeals court rul­ing that denied a new tri­al to a death-row pris­on­er who pros­e­cu­tors and the tri­al court agree was con­vict­ed based on false DNA tes­ti­mo­ny by a dis­graced police crime lab.

On July 26, 2022, The Innocence Network and The Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences, Inc. filed a joint ami­cus brief on behalf of Areli Escobar ask­ing the jus­tices to sum­mar­i­ly reverse the rul­ing of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) that had reject­ed the prosecution’s con­ces­sion and the tri­al court’s ​“metic­u­lous­ly doc­u­ment­ed rec­om­men­da­tion” that Escobar be grant­ed a new tri­al because of mate­ri­al­ly mis­lead­ing DNA evi­dence pre­sent­ed by the now shut­tered Austin Police Crime Lab. 

“[W]hen a con­vic­tion is secured through DNA evi­dence shown to be false, the risk of wrong­ful con­vic­tion is intol­er­a­bly high,” the orga­ni­za­tions wrote, ​“espe­cial­ly in a death-penal­ty case, like this one, with no oth­er reli­able incrim­i­nat­ing evi­dence.” The groups called the state appeals court’s rul­ing ​“an egre­gious betray­al of the ideals of fair and accu­rate criminal justice.”

Two days lat­er, the American Bar Association and a group of sev­en for­mer state attor­neys gen­er­al, United States Attorneys, and state pros­e­cu­tors filed two more ami­cus briefs in sup­port of Escobar. The ABA argued that Escobar’s con­vic­tion, based on false tes­ti­mo­ny by employ­ees of a crime lab that ​“so con­sis­tent­ly and egre­gious­ly mis­han­dled DNA evi­dence that it was shut down by the state,” should be reversed ​“as a mat­ter of fundamental fairness.” 

The for­mer pros­e­cu­tors urged the jus­tices to grant Escobar a new tri­al, not­ing that ​“Prosecutors do not con­fess error light­ly” and that when they do, ​“courts should give those con­fes­sions due consideration.” 

“Now a defen­dant whom the State of Texas no longer wish­es to pros­e­cute, for a crime the State believes he may not have com­mit­ted, is set to be exe­cut­ed, under a judg­ment that the State was unwill­ing to defend,” the pros­e­cu­tors wrote. ​“The Court must stop this runaway train.”

Escobar was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 2011 on charges that he had raped and mur­dered 17-year-old Bianca Maldonado, who was stabbed 47 times. Prosecutors pre­sent­ed DNA, shoeprint, and fin­ger­print analy­sis from the Austin Police Department crime lab that pur­port­ed to iden­ti­fy Escobar as the assailant. They also pre­sent­ed tes­ti­mo­ny from Escobar’s ex-girl­friend that she pur­port­ed­ly received a cell­phone call in which she heard a woman repeat­ed­ly scream­ing over the course of ten min­utes while being raped — although ini­tial­ly the girl­friend had told inves­ti­ga­tors only that she had heard Escobar hav­ing ​“con­sen­su­al sex” with a woman.

As the for­mer pros­e­cu­tors explained, the crime lab was sub­se­quent­ly shut down after a state audit of the facil­i­ty “ uncov­ered ​‘sig­nif­i­cant con­t­a­m­i­na­tion issues,’ dis­cov­ered that the labs lead­er­ship ​‘did not have the sci­en­tif­ic and tech­ni­cal knowl­edge nec­es­sary to lead the lab,’ and learned the senior DNA analy­sists who han­dled the DNA evi­dence in [Escobar]’s case were found to have a ​‘sus­pect and vic­tim-dri­ven bias’ that led them to work back­ward from the goal of obtain­ing a con­vic­tion and make the data line up accord­ing­ly.” The ABA, which pro­mul­gat­ed stan­dards for the use of DNA evi­dence in crim­i­nal cas­es in 2006 as part of its wide­ly fol­lowed ABA Standards for Criminal Justice, explained that the Austin crime lab vio­lat­ed pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards regard­ing accred­i­ta­tion, trans­paren­cy, sci­en­tif­ic best prac­tices, con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, sci­en­tif­ic pro­to­cols, qual­i­ty assur­ance, and bias in the inter­pre­ta­tion of DNA test results. 

The crime lab’s ​“pat­tern of mis­con­duct was on full dis­play in Mr. Escobar’s case,” the Innocence Network and The Center for Integrity in Forensic Science said in their brief. ​“The DNA evi­dence was exposed to severe con­t­a­m­i­na­tion risks at the lab, and the ana­lysts assigned to this case repeat­ed­ly ignored best prac­tices and engaged in bias-dri­ven manip­u­la­tion of the test­ing to incrim­i­nate Mr. Escobar. The pros­e­cu­tion broad­cast this false test­ing as the cen­ter­piece of its case, and one juror even stat­ed pub­licly that the DNA evi­dence took him off the fence and con­vinced him to join a guilty verdict.”

After con­duct­ing an exten­sive evi­den­tiary hear­ing, the tri­al court found that ​“there can be no con­fi­dence that the lab pro­duced valid and accu­rate results.” It fur­ther found that, ​“after remov­ing the DNA evi­dence pre­sent­ed at tri­al, the remain­ing evi­dence relied on by the State was ques­tion­able and cir­cum­stan­tial.” Noting that one juror ​“was ​‘on the fence’ until the DNA evi­dence was sub­mit­ted,” the tri­al court found that ​“the use of unre­li­able and mis­lead­ing DNA evi­dence vio­lat­ed Mr. Escobar’s due process rights by under­min­ing the fun­da­men­tal fair­ness of his tri­al” and rec­om­mend­ed that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals grant him a new trial. 

With the case before the TCCA, the Travis County District Attorney’s office con­ced­ed that a prej­u­di­cial con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tion had occurred, and that Escobar was enti­tled to a new tri­al. However, with­out acknowl­edg­ing the prosecution’s con­ces­sion, the TCCA denied relief in an unpub­lished per curi­am opin­ion issued January 26, 2022. The court assert­ed that Escobar had ​“failed to show that the gen­er­al defi­cien­cies dis­cov­ered in the [crime lab] audit specif­i­cal­ly affect­ed the DNA results in his par­tic­u­lar case” and that the faulty DNA evi­dence was not ​“mate­r­i­al.” It ruled that the oth­er evi­dence pre­sent­ed by the pros­e­cu­tion — includ­ing ​“that Applicant’s shoe could not be exclud­ed as a pos­si­ble con­trib­u­tor to a shoe print found at the crime scene” and ​“a latent print on a lotion bot­tle near [the victim’s] body was iden­ti­fied to the ring fin­ger of Applicant’s left hand” — like­ly would inde­pen­dent­ly have sus­tained the con­vic­tion. The court then sum­mar­i­ly reject­ed the prosecution’s motion to recon­sid­er its decision.

The Innocence Network and Center for Integrity in Forensics took sharp issue with that con­clu­sions, not­ing that ​“the oth­er foren­sic evi­dence intro­duced against [Escobar] was also unre­li­able.” The shoe-print analy­sis, they wrote, ​“was unsci­en­tif­ic and showed noth­ing more than that a tread pat­tern on the crime scene resem­bled a pat­tern found on thou­sands of oth­er shoes in the area, includ­ing one of Mr. Escobar’s.” The fin­ger­print evi­dence came from a low-qual­i­ty par­tial print and the tes­ti­mo­ny that it was sup­pos­ed­ly a ​“match” to Escobar came after a mid-tri­al reeval­u­a­tion of the print that con­tra­dict­ed pri­or pros­e­cu­tion tes­ti­mo­ny that ​“there were no pos­i­tive results for the latent prints found in [the victim]’s apartment.”

All three ami­ci strong­ly chal­lenged the TCCA’s con­clu­sion that the false DNA tes­ti­mo­ny was imma­te­r­i­al. “[W]hen false DNA evi­dence is the cor­ner­stone of a pros­e­cu­tion, the risk of wrong­ful con­vic­tion is severe,” the inno­cence brief wrote. And, the ABA wrote, in a cap­i­tal case where the out­come is a mat­ter of life or death, “[f]inality inter­ests should nev­er trump the mis­use of inac­cu­rate DNA evidence.”