PUBLISHER'S NOTE: WORDS TO HEED: FROM OUR POST ON KEVIN COOPER'S APPLICATION FOR POST-CONVICTION DNA TESTING; CALIFORNIA: (Applicable wherever a state resists DNA testing): "Blogger/extraordinaire Jeff Gamso's blunt, unequivocal, unforgettable message to the powers that be in California: "JUST TEST THE FUCKING DNA." (Oh yes, Gamso raises, as he does in many of his posts, an important philosophical question: This post is headed: "What is truth, said jesting Pilate."...Says Gamso: "So what's the harm? What, exactly, are they scared of? Don't we want the truth?")
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BACKGROUND: (Actual Innocence Review):"On June 21st, 2001, Gustavo Mireles went to a bar in Donna, TX, where he casually met and talked to the victim, Mary Jane Rebollar and her female friend. After initial polite conversation, Mary Jane and her friend went to play pool, while Gustavo returned to watching a soccer game on the bar's television. Mary Jane's friend left early, but Mary Jane and Gustavo both stayed until closing time, when everyone left and went home. Mary Jane was found two days later in the closed cab of her truck, which was parked in a plowed field. She had been stabbed over forty times with a screwdriver-type weapon. Two drops of blood at the scene and a pubic hair "matched" Gustavo. He was subsequently charged and convicted of murder, and sentenced to life in prison. He has been incarcerated for sixteen years."
https://www.airtexas.org/mireles.html
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Mireles’ attorneys had argued that retesting the DNA evidence would show Mireles wasn’t at the crime scene. He had been at a bar where Rebollar was on the night of her murder. The attorneys also argued the DPS crime lab, which was in McAllen at the time, didn’t use the FBI’s newest testing standard in 2001 and said much of the DNA evidence didn’t return results because of how it was tested. That crime lab was later shut down for faulty testing in sexual assault kits, which happened around the same time the DNA in Mireles’ case was also tested there. Mireles’ appeal also suggested his blood may have been cross-contaminated, claiming the test tube containing his sample was missing one-fourth of the blood it was supposed to have and that the evidence bag it was in was open. Fingernail scrapings were also called into question. They were taken from Rebollar, who had extensive defense wounds, and the DNA taken from them only matched a woman — not a man. Mireles’ appeal also suggested Rebollar’s real killers were a man named Jesus Arce and/or a woman named Delia Rodriguez. Rebollar had been in a relationship with Arce and had recently befriended Rodriguez before her death. The jury during Mireles’ trial never heard that Arce and Rodriguez had a relationship that Rebollar did not know about. Arce was murdered in Lubbock in 2015."
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PHOTO CAPTION: "Family of Gustavo Mireles, who was convicted of capital murder in 2002 and sentenced to life in prison, stand outside the 13th Court of Appeals in Edinburg on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022. The family hopes that new DNA testing will exonerate Mireles."
GIST: "An appellate court on October 12 has shot down a ruling that would have allowed a 57-year-old Alamo man serving life in prison for a brutal stabbing death in 2001 to have DNA retested inn the case.
The 13th Court of Appeals reversed state District Judge Mario E. Ramirez’s 2021 ruling that granted post-conviction DNA testing in Gustavo Mireles’ case.
A jury convicted Mireles on Aug. 14, 2002 of fatally stabbing Mary Jane Rebollar 46 times on June 23, 2001.
Her body was found in a red and white Chevrolet pickup truck on a dirt road by a sugarcane field near Alamo.
Mireles has maintained his innocence since his arrest and never confessed.
The only physical evidence used to convict Mireles included two blood patterns on the truck’s passenger side door, blood on Rebollar’s pants and a pubic hair found inside her purse.
Appellate attorneys with the Hidalgo County District Attorney’s Office previously said all of those samples included Mireles’ DNA.
The 13th Court of Appeals agreed.
“Here, the trial court found, among other things, that all items that Mireles requested to be DNA tested were ‘not previously subjected to DNA testing.’ However, the evidence presented at trial showed that several items had previously been tested, and Mireles’s DNA was found on several items, which connected him to the offense,” the ruling stated.
Those items included the blood on the pants, the public hairs and the blood stains and the truck, according to the ruling.
“Thus, the trial court’s finding that these exhibits had not been previously tested is contradicted and not supported by the record,” the ruling stated.
The appellate court found that it would be improbable that new DNA testing would exclude Mireles.
The ruling also said that Ramirez, the state district judge, had granted Mireles’ request to retest four pubic hairs. The state had argued that those hairs contained no biological material that is suitable for retesting. “We agree with the State. At the hearing, no one stated that these three hairs were suitable for retesting,” the ruling stated.
There was also testimony that the Texas Department of Public Safety, which has a lab in Weslaco, could decline to retest any evidence that “was not stored in some place that’s not air-conditioned in south Texas.”
That’s because heat and humidity degrades DNA over time and these particular hairs were not stored in an air-conditioned environment.
“By its second, third, and fourth issues, the State contends that Mireles failed to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that he would not have been convicted if exculpatory results had been obtained through DNA testing of items not previously subjected to DNA testing, items previously tested but not linked to Mireles, and items previously tested where no DNA profile was found,” the ruling stated.
The appellate court found that the pubic hairs and blood found at the crime scene matched Mireles and concluded that Ramirez erred by granting the retesting.
The court also found Mireles failed to show that he would be exonerated if DNA from another donor were found on items not previously tested, on items previously tested that weren’t linked to Mireles, and on items where no DNA profile was found.
Mireles’ attorneys had argued that retesting the DNA evidence would show Mireles wasn’t at the crime scene.
He had been at a bar where Rebollar was on the night of her murder.
The attorneys also argued the DPS crime lab, which was in McAllen at the time, didn’t use the FBI’s newest testing standard in 2001 and said much of the DNA evidence didn’t return results because of how it was tested.
That crime lab was later shut down for faulty testing in sexual assault kits, which happened around the same time the DNA in Mireles’ case was also tested there.
Mireles’ appeal also suggested his blood may have been cross-contaminated, claiming the test tube containing his sample was missing one-fourth of the blood it was supposed to have and that the evidence bag it was in was open.
Fingernail scrapings were also called into question.
They were taken from Rebollar, who had extensive defense wounds, and the DNA taken from them only matched a woman — not a man.
Mireles’ appeal also suggested Rebollar’s real killers were a man named Jesus Arce and/or a woman named Delia Rodriguez.
Rebollar had been in a relationship with Arce and had recently befriended Rodriguez before her death.
The jury during Mireles’ trial never heard that Arce and Rodriguez had a relationship that Rebollar did not know about.
Arce was murdered in Lubbock in 2015."
The entire story can be read at:
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/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
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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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-1234880143/
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