Court calls for probe of crime lab’s handling of death penalty evidence
The state’s highest criminal court on Wednesday ordered a closer examination of death row inmate Areli Escobar’s claims that shoddy work by the Austin police crime lab compromised evidence in his case.
Escobar is seeking to have his conviction overturned, and a new trial ordered, after a Travis County jury sentenced him to death in the 2009 sexual assault and stabbing of his neighbor, 17-year-old Bianca Maldonado, an LBJ High School student who was attacked at her East Austin apartment with her year-old son, who survived, nearby.
In a brief order issued Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals directed state District Judge David Wahlberg to examine claims that the crime lab produced false or misleading conclusions from DNA evidence in the case, particularly on tests performed on the shirt, jeans and shoes that tied Escobar to the murder.
Defense lawyers also argued that problems discovered at the crime lab after Escobar’s trial — including poorly trained analysts, reports of cross-contamination of samples and questionable analytical methods — tainted the DNA results used to convict Escobar of capital murder.
“Areli Escobar’s capital murder conviction rests on forensic evidence developed by incompetent scientists using bad science,” defense lawyers with the state Office of Capital and Forensic Writs said in his latest appeal.