PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Mr. Escobar was convicted in 2011 of murdering Bianca Maldonado Hernandez, who lived in the same apartment complex. The prosecution presented some circumstantial evidence, including cell tower records and a partial fingerprint, but the centerpiece of its case was evidence from the Austin Police Department’s DNA lab. At a later court hearing on a challenge to Mr. Escobar’s conviction, a juror said that the DNA evidence had been crucial. “I was sitting on the fence, if you will, as to whether he was guilty or not guilty all the way up to when the DNA evidence was submitted to the jury and, for me, that was the sealing factor,” the juror said. Five years after Mr. Escobar’s trial, an audit by the Texas Forensic Science Commission revealed shortcomings in the DNA lab’s work, including failures to follow scientific protocols, bias, contaminated samples and inadequate training. The lab suspended its operations, and it has never reopened. A 2016 letter to the Austin City Council from criminal judges in Travis County said that “the problems discovered raise questions about every determination made by the lab.” Given all of this, Judge Wahlberg found in 2020, the DNA evidence in Mr. Escobar’s case was “false, misleading and unreliable.” “Without the DNA evidence,” Judge Wahlberg wrote, “the remaining evidence relied on by the state was circumstantial and weak and would not have supported a conviction for capital murder.” The Texas appeals court took the opposite view, saying the remaining evidence was sufficient to support the conviction notwithstanding “the general deficiencies discovered” by the commission’s audit."
STORY: A Prosecutor’s Change of Heart in a Capital Case at the Supreme Court," by Reporter Adam Liptak, published by The New York Times, on November 11, 2022. (Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on legal developments. A graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining The Times in 2002.)
SUB-HEADING: "A district attorney in Texas, convinced that the evidence that sent Areli Escobar to death row was flawed, is supporting his request for a new trial."
PHOTO CAPTION: "José P. Garza, a district attorney, joined lawyers for Areli Escobar, who was convicted of murder in 2011, in pushing for a new trial."
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QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Ben Wolff, the director of the state’s Office of Capital and Forensic Writs, a public defender’s office that represents Mr. Escobar, said Mr. Garza deserved praise for his willingness to keep an open mind. “Many other prosecutors would have just continued to robotically defend the conviction,” Mr. Wolff said. “But to their credit, the Travis County D.A.’s office carefully reviewed the trial court opinion and decided that their office had been wrong.”
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GIST: "A state judge in Texas ruled that Areli Escobar, a death row inmate there, had been convicted based on junk science produced by a police DNA lab so riddled with problems that it had to be shut down. “It would be shocking to the conscience to uphold the conviction of Mr. Escobar,” Judge David Wahlberg of the Travis County District Court wrote in an 86-page decision in 2020. “Mr. Escobar’s trial was fundamentally unfair.”
José P. Garza, the district attorney whose office had obtained the conviction, said his initial impulse was to dig in and continue to defend it.
“But as more evidence came to light about how flawed the evidence the jury relied upon was, we had to re-evaluate that position,” he said. “Although it is the instinct of every district attorney to defend convictions, our job is to see that justice is done, and we take that very seriously.”
When the case reached the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest court for criminal matters, Mr. Garza did something surprising.
He joined lawyers for Mr. Escobar in urging the court to order a new trial, one that would exclude the evidence he had come to doubt.
But the appeals court upheld Mr. Escobar’s conviction this year in a short unsigned opinion that did not acknowledge the prosecution’s changed position.
On Friday, the Supreme Court is scheduled to consider whether to take up Mr. Escobar’s appeal.
Mr. Garza’s office has once again filed a brief supporting the inmate whom it had sent to death row.
“You have both the state and the defense agreeing that the evidence that the jury relied upon to sentence a person to death was flawed,” Mr. Garza said. “I hope at the very least that they take that seriously.”
Mr. Escobar was convicted in 2011 of murdering Bianca Maldonado Hernandez, who lived in the same apartment complex.
The prosecution presented some circumstantial evidence, including cell tower records and a partial fingerprint, but the centerpiece of its case was evidence from the Austin Police Department’s DNA lab.
At a later court hearing on a challenge to Mr. Escobar’s conviction, a juror said that the DNA evidence had been crucial.
“I was sitting on the fence, if you will, as to whether he was guilty or not guilty all the way up to when the DNA evidence was submitted to the jury and, for me, that was the sealing factor,” the juror said.
Five years after Mr. Escobar’s trial, an audit by the Texas Forensic Science Commission revealed shortcomings in the DNA lab’s work, including failures to follow scientific protocols, bias, contaminated samples and inadequate training.
The lab suspended its operations, and it has never reopened.
A 2016 letter to the Austin City Council from criminal judges in Travis County said that “the problems discovered raise questions about every determination made by the lab.”
Given all of this, Judge Wahlberg found in 2020, the DNA evidence in Mr. Escobar’s case was “false, misleading and unreliable.”
“Without the DNA evidence,” Judge Wahlberg wrote, “the remaining evidence relied on by the state was circumstantial and weak and would not have supported a conviction for capital murder.”
The Texas appeals court took the opposite view, saying the remaining evidence was sufficient to support the conviction notwithstanding “the general deficiencies discovered” by the commission’s audit.
Daniel Woofter, one of Mr. Escobar’s lawyers, said the appeals court had not bothered to disclose a key fact. “The prosecutors themselves won’t stand behind their conviction anymore,” he said.
After the appeals court ruled, Mr. Garza’s office filed one more brief, gently suggesting that the judges might have overlooked the reality that all concerned — the trial judge, the defense and the prosecution — agreed that Mr. Escobar was entitled to a new trial.
“The possibility that the state failed to have clearly indicated its change in position has come to its attention because this court did not acknowledge in its order, as is usual practice, that the state had conceded that applicant was entitled to relief,” the brief said.
The court denied the request for reconsideration without giving a reason.
Ben Wolff, the director of the state’s Office of Capital and Forensic Writs, a public defender’s office that represents Mr. Escobar, said Mr. Garza deserved praise for his willingness to keep an open mind.
“Many other prosecutors would have just continued to robotically defend the conviction,” Mr. Wolff said. “But to their credit, the Travis County D.A.’s office carefully reviewed the trial court opinion and decided that their office had been wrong.”
In his Supreme Court brief in the case, Escobar v. Texas, No. 21-1601, Mr. Garza said the prosecution’s views should count.
“In refusing to acknowledge the state’s admission of error,” he wrote, the state appeals court “undermined the district attorney’s historical role in the criminal justice system and failed to remedy the federal due process violation that both parties and the district court have agreed occurred.”
In an interview, Mr. Garza said the question for the justices was straightforward.
“If you look at the trial record carefully, there can be no question that the state relied heavily upon the DNA evidence,” he said. “And then when you look at the DNA evidence in this case and the history of the lab that produced it, there can be no question that that evidence is suspect at the very least.""
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/24/us/texas-death-penalty-supreme-court.html
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: No decision yet from the U.S. Supreme Court. Stay tuned!
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resurce. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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