PHOTO CAPTION: "The U.S. Supreme Court should once again consider the case of a Texas death row inmate whose conviction was based on DNA evidence tested by a lab that “consistently and egregiously mishandled DNA evidence,” the ABA has said in an amicus brief."
GIST: "The U.S. Supreme Court should once again consider the case of a Texas death row inmate whose conviction was based on DNA evidence tested by a lab that “consistently and egregiously mishandled DNA evidence,” the ABA has said in an amicus brief.
The ABA filed the March 27 brief in the case of Areli Escobar, according to an ABA press release. It is the second time that the ABA has urged the Supreme Court to hear the case.
The ABA filed its first amicus brief in August 2022, arguing that Escobar’s conviction “ought not stand as a matter of fundamental fairness.” The brief cited findings by a state habeas court, which found that DNA evidence in Escobar’s case was “false, misleading and unreliable.”
The lab’s mishandling of DNA evidence was so egregious that it was shut down by the state, the first ABA brief said.
According to SCOTUSblog, in January 2023, Supreme Court vacated a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals decision that upheld Escobar’s conviction and remanded. The Supreme Court said the Texas court should consider the state’s position supporting Escobar and confessing error in the case.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the top criminal court in Texas, once again upheld the conviction in September 2023.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said it was aware that the state was no longer defending Escobar’s conviction when it originally ruled against Escobar, and nothing presented to the court since then changes its conclusion that there was no due process violation. There was no showing that lab deficiencies affected Escobar’s DNA evidence, the court said.
Evidence shown to be false—statistical errors in DNA probability estimates—isn’t material because Escobar would have been convicted anyway, the court had concluded.
The victim in the case, 17-year-old Bianca Maldonado Hernandez, had 46 stab wounds. She lived in the same apartment building as Escobar. Escobar’s girlfriend testified at trial that she called him in the early-morning hours on the date in question, and she could hear moaning and screaming in the background. The girlfriend had concluded that Escobar was having sex with someone and had complained to her friends about it.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals cited the girlfriend’s testimony, along with shoe-print evidence, Escobar’s appearance after the offense, and Escobar’s fingerprint on a lotion bottle near the victim’s body,
According to the ABA’s new brief, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals “improperly downplayed the inculpatory effect of the false DNA evidence, and retroactively attempted to rehabilitate certain pieces of evidence” to support the conviction.
“The DNA errors go to the heart of the reliability of the evidence in this case and cast a pall over [Escobar’s] conviction and sentence,” the new ABA brief said.
DNA evidence found to be false and unreliable “ran afoul” of at least four parts of the ABA Standards for Criminal Justice: DNA Evidence, according to the new amicus brief.
Those standards say labs should maintain accreditation through “scrupulous adherence to scientific best practices,” should collect and keep evidence in a manner that prevents contamination, should implement scientifically valid protocols, and should take steps to minimize bias in the interpretation of DNA test results.
In Escobar’s case, the brief said, lab employees provided misleading testimony that gave the impression they had a system of checks and balances. In addition, the lab had multiple instances of evidence contamination, employed unqualified staff members who used “indefensible” protocols, and failed to minimize bias in interpreting test results.
Lab contamination affected samples from Escobar’s shoe and his sister’s Mazda vehicle, the new ABA brief said.
“It ought to be uncontroversial that when critical evidence in a capital murder trial was based on scientifically unreliable methods and processes of dubious validity, the resulting conviction cannot stand,” the ABA brief said."
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/dna-issues-cast-a-pall-over-murder-conviction-warranting-us-supreme-court-review-aba-amicus-brief-says
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. 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/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
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/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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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-12348801
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MORE VALUABLE WORDS: "As a former public defender, Texas' refusal to delay Ivan Cantu's execution to evaluate new evidence is deeply worrying for the state of our legal system. There should be no room for doubt in a death penalty case. The facts surrounding Cantu's execution should haunt all of us."
Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett; X March 1, 2024.
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