The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to reconsider its decision to let a death row inmate be executed even though prosecutors now agree his conviction should be thrown out because it relied on potentially faulty DNA evidence.
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.