Texas Appeals Court Rejects Recommendation for New Trial for Death-Row Prisoner

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has once again reject­ed the find­ings of a tri­al court that a death-row pris­on­er was enti­tled to relief from his con­vic­tion or death sentence. 

Applying a nar­row inter­pre­ta­tion of a 2013 junk-sci­ence law, the court on March 11, 2020 set aside the rec­om­men­da­tion of an El Paso County tri­al court that death-row pris­on­er Rigoberto Avila should be grant­ed a new tri­al as a result of the prosecution’s reliance on false and out­dat­ed sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence. The court wrote that Avila had failed to meet the “’Herculean’ bur­den to prove by clear and con­vinc­ing evi­dence that no rea­son­able juror would have con­vict­ed him based on the new evidence.”

The rul­ing fol­lowed two oth­er recent TCCA deci­sions refus­ing to over­turn death sen­tences that tri­al courts had said were uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly imposed. In October 2019, the TCCA rein­stat­ed a death sen­tence imposed on Paul Storey, revers­ing a Tarrant County court rul­ing that had reduced Story’s sen­tence to life because the pros­e­cu­tor lied to the jury that the victim’s fam­i­ly want­ed the death penalty. 

In June 2018, after already hav­ing been reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court on the same issue, the TCCA ruled that Bobby Moore is not intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and may be exe­cut­ed, despite a find­ing by a Harris County tri­al court judge, a con­ces­sion from the Harris County District Attorney’s office, and briefs from numer­ous pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tions and dis­abil­i­ty advo­cates all con­clud­ing that Moore meets the diag­nos­tic cri­te­ria for intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. The Supreme Court lat­er over­turned the TCCA for a sec­ond time, and Moore was resen­tenced to life in prison.

Avila was sen­tenced to death for the alleged mur­der of his girlfriend’s 19-month-old son after the pros­e­cu­tion pre­sent­ed what Avila con­tend­ed was false expert tes­ti­mo­ny that he had phys­i­cal­ly abused the child. At tri­al, the pros­e­cu­tor told the jury: ​“There’s no oth­er way the kid could have died.” With his exe­cu­tion loom­ing in January 2014, Avila pre­sent­ed an expert med­ical report that showed that the infant may have died from acci­den­tal injuries caused by his four-year-old brother. 

The TCCA stayed Avila’s exe­cu­tion based on a new 2013 law designed to assure pris­on­ers access to the courts to lit­i­gate new evi­dence that their con­vic­tions had been based on false or mis­lead­ing foren­sic evi­dence. Avila’s case was one of the first sent back to a low­er court for recon­sid­er­a­tion under the junk-science law.

After con­duct­ing a hear­ing, Judge Annabell Perez ruled on October 9, 2018 that this new med­ical evi­dence ​“prob­a­bly would have led jurors to har­bor rea­son­able doubt about [Avila’s] guilt” if it had been avail­able at trial. 

The TCCA reject­ed the tri­al court’s find­ings in an unsigned opinion. 

Avila’s lawyers said they were ​“deeply dis­mayed” by the Texas appeals court’s deci­sion. ​“It should deeply trou­ble every Texan that, at least for the time being, Mr. Avila remains under a death sen­tence even though exten­sive and pow­er­ful sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence rais­es grave doubts about his guilt,” the lawyers said. ​“The qual­i­ty of [the court’s] opin­ion fails to respect either Judge Perez’s work in review­ing this case or the Legislature’s efforts to lim­it the destruc­tive impact of ​‘junk sci­ence’ in criminal cases.” 

The deci­sion was the lat­est in a pat­tern of allow­ing con­vic­tions or death sen­tences to stand despite being the prod­ucts of false or mis­lead­ing expert tes­ti­mo­ny. In 2019, Texas exe­cut­ed at least four men who had false sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence pre­sent­ed in their cas­es. Larry Swearingen was exe­cut­ed on August 21 despite evi­dence from experts in mul­ti­ple fields that the state had pre­sent­ed false tes­ti­mo­ny about mul­ti­ple foren­sic issues, includ­ing that the crime actu­al­ly occurred at a time in which it was phys­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble for Swearingen to have been the killer. Travis Runnels, Billie Wayne Coble and Robert Sparks all were exe­cut­ed despite the prosecution’s reliance on false tes­ti­mo­ny about the con­di­tions of con­fine­ment in Texas pris­ons to show that the men would pose a con­tin­u­ing risk of vio­lence in prison if their lives were spared.

In January 2020, in a non-cap­i­tal mur­der case, the Court denied a new tri­al to for­mer high school prin­ci­pal Joe Bryan even after new evi­dence showed that the state’s blood spat­ter tes­ti­mo­ny was false and the foren­sic expert who tes­ti­fied against Bryan admit­ted his con­clu­sions were wrong. Turned down for parole sev­en times while insist­ing on his inno­cence, Bryan was final­ly released March 31, 2020.