Areli Escobar was sentenced to death in 2011 for an Austin murder, but even prosecutors now agree his conviction relied heavily on faulty DNA testing by the discredited Travis County crime lab.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ordered Texas highest criminal court to revisit a death penalty case., The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
In 2011, Areli Escobar was convicted of the rape and murder of 17-year-old Bianca Maldonado. In 2020, a district court judge ruled that Escobar deserved a new trial because his conviction relied heavily on “scientifically unreliable” DNA evidence analyzed by a Travis County lab that was later closed down due to untrained staff and improper testing procedures.its crime lab after the Texas Forensic Science Commission found widespread issues with its DNA testing.
The flawed DNA evidence was a crucial part of the state’s case against Escobar, said Benjamin Wolff, director of the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs, the state’s post-conviction public defender for capital and forensic science cases who represented Escobar in his appeal to the Supreme Court. In Escobar’s brief to the court, Wolff argued that the Court of Criminal Appeals went too far in upholding a conviction that the state’s own prosecuting office no longer supported.
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