Supreme Court Rejects Texas Death Row Inmate’s Appeal

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from Texas death row inmate Areli Escobar, despite support for a new trial from the same prosecutors who once secured his conviction.

The Monday decision leaves in place a state appellate ruling that upheld his death sentence for the 2009 murder of 17-year-old Bianca Maldonado.

Unlike a recent high-profile Oklahoma case involving Richard Glossip, whose conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court, Escobar’s appeal was denied without comment from the justices.

What to Know

Escobar was convicted in the May 2009 fatal stabbing and sexual assault of Maldonado, who lived in the same apartment complex in Austin.

The focus of the prosecution case against Escobar was evidence from the Austin Police Department’s DNA lab.

But a later audit turned up problems at the lab that led Judge David Wahlberg of the Travis County District Court to conclude that Escobar’s trial was unfair.

“The State’s use of unreliable, false, or misleading DNA evidence to secure (Escobar’s) conviction violated fundamental concepts of justice,” Wahlberg wrote.

When the case returned to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Travis County prosecutors no longer were defending the conviction. Voters had elected a new district attorney, Jose Garza, who ran on a promise to hold police accountable in Austin.

But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals twice rejected Escobar’s appeals. The first time followed a lower court decision ordering a new trial after the judge identified problems with the evidence. More recently, the appeals court again ruled against Escobar after the Supreme Court had ordered it to reconsider.

Why It Matters

The Supreme Court’s denial means Escobar remains on death row, even as doubts about the integrity of his trial have led to rare bipartisan support for a retrial. The ruling comes shortly after the Court reversed another capital conviction in a different state due to prosecutorial misconduct, highlighting concerns over consistency in death penalty cases.

Escobar’s case has drawn particular attention because the Travis County District Attorney’s office, under new leadership, withdrew its support for the original conviction.

What People Are Saying

Jose Garza, the district attorney whose office had obtained the conviction, said that, over time, he reconsidered his decision: “As more evidence came to light about how flawed the evidence the jury relied upon was, we had to reevaluate that position,” he told the New York Times in 2022.

In 2017 Magaly Maldonado, the victim’s younger sister, told a local NBC affiliate the family was distressed about the prospect of a new trial: “I feel sad about all of this because I know we have to start over again, I know this is going to be hard not only for us but all of our family and people who know my sister. This is going to bring tears again, it’s going to be really hard.”

What’s Next

Although Escobar is not facing an imminent execution date, his legal avenues for challenging the conviction are increasingly limited. Without Supreme Court intervention or a further shift in prosecutorial strategy, Escobar’s death sentence remains in place, despite documented flaws in the evidence used to convict him.

The ruling raises ongoing questions about the standards used to revisit capital cases and the role of prosecutors in challenging their own past convictions.

This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.