Content warning: This post contains a crime scene photograph of a bloody palm print.
Compelling evidence in an innocence case is often found within district attorney or police case files; files that are hard to obtain, that contain evidence that has been sitting for years waiting to be discovered. Evidence that strongly points to the innocence of someone convicted of a crime. That is what has happened with our innocent client Andres Mascorro.
After considerable effort, we were finally able to obtain the Harris County District Attorney case files and within them was a critically important discovery: a clear copy of a bloody palm print that could only have come from the killer of Darryl Kolojaco. Crime scene technicians were able to recover a usable bloody palm print off of a fireplace tile near Darryl’s body. An Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS, search was run by Harris County Sheriff officers comparing it to the prints on file in Harris County, and the print did not belong to Andres Mascorro, the victim, or anyone else that officers suspected may have been involved in the crime.
Eight months after this print was recovered, on February 19th, 1999, Andres’s defense attorneys asked prosecutors for information about the bloody prints, biological material found underneath Darryl’s fingernails, and a hair that was found in his left hand. Detectives informed defense attorneys that they “were still working on it.”
That same week, Andres’s defense attorneys received more than 100 crime scene photos from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office that they had “accidentally” failed to release over the last 8 months. These photos arrived only days before his trial was supposed to start.
In light of the flurry of evidence they didn’t get until the last minute and the lack of testing done on the evidentiary pieces, Mascorro’s defense team filed a Motion for Continuance on March 1st, 1999. The medical examiner’s office informed Andres’s attorneys that it would take approximately two weeks to get the results of the testing, which would mean the results would not arrive until after the trial was over.
On this same date, March 1st, 1999, Judge Mike Anderson denied the motion for a continuance. A jury was selected shortly thereafter, and the trial of Andres Mascorro began on March 2nd, 1999. Andres’s trial ended in the evening hours of Friday, March 5th, 1999. Jurors were sent home for the weekend, and returned on Monday, March 8th, 1999 to render their guilty verdict for Andres. He was sentenced to life in prison, without any evidence from the scene of the crime ever being processed.
At almost the exact time we discovered this print, we identified a strong suspect for Darryl’s murder through our extensive on-the-ground investigation. We have confirmed with an independent print analyst that the bloody print is usable, which was known by police and the DA at the time of the trial. We are working through legal avenues to have the print not only compared to our suspect’s, but run through all of AFIS.
This print belongs to the perpetrator of this horrible crime. It’s maddening to know this and other evidence existed at the time of Andres’s trial, that the DA’s office waited until the very last minute to release it to the defense team, and that Judge Anderson had no interest in giving the defense team adequate time to have experts review it. That could have very well been the difference between a guilty or not guilty verdict for Andres. However, this is a very promising development and we look forward to the day it helps prove Andres’s innocence once and for all.