Roberts Court would do anything to uphold death penalty convictions, but they won’t do that
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It’s not easy to get more fascist than the median vote of the Supreme Court, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals pulled it off:
The Supreme Court on Monday sided with a Texas death row inmate who is trying to overturn his conviction based on faulty DNA evidence. In a rare reversal, the inmate received the support of the district attorney involved in the case.
In an unsigned order, the justices agreed to take up the case, but in doing so wiped away the lower court’s decision and sent the case back to that court “for further consideration in light of the confession of error by Texas in its brief filed” in September.
“The most alarming thing about the court’s decision to send the case back for a new trial is that it was even necessary in the first place,” said Steve Vladeck, a CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.
“The state confessed error in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, only to have that court affirm the conviction and death sentence anyway. Thus, while today’s decision is clearly the correct one, it unfortunately comes with no public reprobation of the lower court for forcing the Supreme Court to step in.”
[…]
In court papers, Garza told the court that – post-conviction – his office “undertook a comprehensive reexamination of the forensic evidence” after claims were made and determined that Escobar was entitled to a new trial because the state had offered “flawed and misleading forensic evidence at trial” and violated “established federal due process law.”
After deficiencies in the lab were discovered, it was ultimately shut down.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, however, sustained the conviction and held that Escobar’s rights were not violated because he failed to show a “reasonable likelihood” that the false DNA evidence could have impacted the jury’s judgment.
“The jury could not possibly be influenced by learning that the evidence used to convict the defendant was worthless” is a classic in the field of Republicans Are Always Projecting.