In New Filing, DNA Expert’s Recanted Testimony Further Undermines the Conviction and Death Sentence of Texas Prisoner Jeffery Prible

Mr. Prible was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the mur­ders of Steve Herrera and Nilda Tirado in 1999. The couple’s three young chil­dren died of smoke inhala­tion after a fire was set, alleged­ly to con­ceal the crime. Mr. Prible had spent time at the couple’s home that evening, mak­ing him an ear­ly sus­pect, but inves­ti­ga­tors found no crim­i­nal evi­dence tying him to the crime except a DNA sam­ple recov­ered from semen in Ms. Tirado’s mouth. Mr. Prible had told police they had been hav­ing an affair and that she had per­formed oral sex on him hours before the killings. The case against Mr. Prible stalled until Assistant District Attorney Kelly Siegler, a now true-crime tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty, took over pros­e­cu­tion. Ms. Siegler the­o­rized that the DNA evi­dence reflect­ed a sex­u­al assault car­ried out moments before Ms. Tirado was shot, a the­o­ry that became cen­tral to the prosecution’s case. During clos­ing argu­ments, both Ms. Siegler and her co-coun­sel offered vivid, force­ful char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of the DNA evi­dence to the jury, argu­ing it left no room for an innocent explanation. 

The August 28 fil­ing is not the first chal­lenge to Mr. Prible’s con­vic­tion. In 2020, U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison vacat­ed Mr. Prible’s con­vic­tion, find­ing that Ms. Siegler had con­cealed mate­r­i­al infor­ma­tion from the defense about her deal­ings with jail­house infor­mants — evi­dence that under­cut a key part of the prosecution’s the­o­ry. According to tes­ti­mo­ny that emerged dur­ing fed­er­al appeals, the main wit­ness was a part of a coor­di­nat­ed group of jail­house infor­mants who pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion to Ms. Siegler in exchange for relief in their own sen­tences. Multiple mem­bers of the infor­mant net­work tes­ti­fied that they pro­vid­ed false evi­dence against Mr. Prible in return for lenien­cy. One of the infor­mants tes­ti­fied that Ms. Siegler her­self pro­vid­ed him with detailed infor­ma­tion about Mr. Prible’s case. In over­turn­ing Mr. Prible’s con­vic­tion, Judge Ellison wrote, “[w]ithout ques­tion, the pros­e­cu­tion in this case engaged in a pat­tern of decep­tive behav­ior and active con­ceal­ment. And the evi­dence sup­pressed suf­fi­cient­ly serves to con­travert the pri­ma­ry basis for [Mr.] Prible’s con­vic­tion.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Court lat­er rein­stat­ed Mr. Prible’s con­vic­tion on pro­ce­dur­al grounds with­out address­ing the sub­stance of Judge Ellison’s findings. 

Mr. Prible’s legal team has now asked a tri­al court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to con­sid­er both the pre­vi­ous­ly sup­pressed infor­mant evi­dence and Mr. Watson’s recan­ta­tion togeth­er, stat­ing that “[t]his new evi­dence shows that [Mr.] Prible is actu­al­ly inno­cent.” A sec­ond DNA expert has backed Mr. Watson’s recan­ta­tion, not­ing in a dec­la­ra­tion that sci­en­tif­ic advance­ments show the tes­ti­mo­ny Mr. Watson gave to be, as Mr. Prible’s coun­sel put it, ​“whol­ly unsup­port­able.” The fil­ing relies on a Texas statute allow­ing defen­dants to chal­lenge con­vic­tions based on changed sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing. Mr. Prible’s attor­neys point to cur­rent sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus that sperm can per­sist in the oral cav­i­ty for many hours in a liv­ing per­son, and longer after death, which is direct­ly at odds with assump­tions the pros­e­cu­tion pre­sent­ed at tri­al in 2002.