The Dallas Cowboys Superfan who is Innocent on Texas’s Death Row
Dear Friends,
In the follow up from Sunday’s Super Bowl, I wanted to send award-winning sports podcaster Pablo Torre’s recent interview with Charles Flores, a man on Texas death row, in which Flores talks about his beloved Dallas Cowboys. Torre’s previous podcast about Flores, and how he has followed the Dallas Cowboys from solitary confinement (with some game-day enchiladas and fantasy football mixed in) was nominated for the prestigious Peabody award.
While he’s been following the Dallas Cowboys from solitary confinement, Flores has also been fighting to prove his innocence. Flores’s case is an exemplar of the plague of wrongful convictions in Texas. His 25-year-old wrongful conviction, like so many others, turned on junk science: in his case, the testimony of a hypnotized witness. Remarkably, the witness initially described two other perpetrators who looked nothing like Flores, and she failed to pick him up in a six-photo line-up. The witness didn’t identify Flores until 13 months later—mid-trial, after she had been subjected to “investigative hypnosis,” and after she had been shown Flores’s photo multiple times. In the coming days, Flores will be appealing his innocence claim to the United States Supreme Court.
With gratitude,
Burke Butler
Executive Director
Texas Defender Service
