The United States Supreme Court has declined to reevaluate a death penalty trial involving an Austin-based individual for the second time, despite ongoing concerns about the reliability of the DNA evidence used in the case. The individual in question, Areli Escobar, was found guilty and sentenced to death in 2011 for his alleged involvement in the brutal murder and sexual assault of Bianca Maldonado, a 17-year-old girl. Post-conviction, Escobar’s lawyers pushed for a retrial after discovering significant discrepancies at the Austin Police Department’s crime lab, which included serious misconduct in the handling of DNA evidence.
Escobar’s legal representation has made the case that the prosecutorial team from the Travis County District Attorney’s Office leaned heavily on potentially faulty DNA evidence to secure Escobar’s conviction. Remarkably, the District Attorney’s Office, currently headed by reform advocate José Garza, concedes to the frailties in the case and has supported the defense in their call for a new trial. Their stance aligns with several other heavy-hitters in the legal community, including a retired Travis County district court judge, the American Bar Association, and a contingent of ex-state attorneys general, state prosecutors, and U.S. attorneys.
However, the plea to reassess the case based on flaws in due process has met with dual rejections from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Undeterred, Escobar’s legal team brought their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, not once, but twice. Initially, Supreme Court justices granted them a preliminary victory, casting aside the decision of the appeals court to sustain the conviction and redirecting it to the court of criminal appeals for a second look.
Nevertheless, the criminal appeals court refused to alter its verdict, casting aside new evidence put forward by the defense team, which called into question the reliability of the original evidence, as well as put forward an alternative suspect in the case. Escobar’s subsequent appeal to the Supreme Court was dismissed this Monday, providing no reason for its refusal. Although this decision ensures Escobar’s continued residence on death row, it doesn’t bring the execution any closer.
A mere three days after Escobar’s initial conviction, supplementary DNA testing of the prosecutorial evidence yielded inconclusive results. However, it wasn’t until six years later, in 2017, that Escobar’s defense team was made aware of these results, after they had already appealed the case. Their appeal had been triggered a year prior, when an audit by the Texas Forensic Science Commission mandated the closure of the Austin Police Department’s crime lab.
This investigation discovered severe issues pertaining to the DNA segment of the APD’s Forensic Science Division, including the utilization of unscientific methods and contamination. Since the lab’s closing nearly a decade ago, two convictions associated with the lab’s evidence mismanagement have been reversed by the state Court of Criminal Appeals.
The Supreme Court’s most recent decision in Escobar’s case came on the heels of another case out of Oklahoma, where they similarly vacated a conviction. In both instances, the appellants implored the Supreme Court to rule on whether a capital conviction should be set aside if the prosecution acknowledges the case was significantly flawed and chooses not to defend it. The Court, however, declined to clarify the issue.
The state of Texas’s top lawyer, Attorney General Ken Paxton, issued legal documents opposing such a posited rule in both the Escobar and the concurrent Glossip cases. He made the case that courts should rigorously evaluate convictions independently, rather than give more credence to admissions of error from the prosecutors. The Attorney General argued that prioritizing prosecutorial admissions of error could bring sentencings, both past and future, under the sway of local prosecutors’ political leanings.
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