Brandon Moon, an Innocent Man, v. Jaime Esparza-Part I

"It is better to let ten guilty men go free than it is to convict one innocent man." So much do we as Americans value freedom and honest government that this has been a long and proud standing precept in our legal beliefs and culture. Unfortunately in El Paso, it has become a myth under the current DA's administration. The following is my summary and analysis of the Brandon Moon lawsuit.


In 2004, nationally renowned attorney, Barry Scheck, of the highly revered Innocence Project got involved in Mr. Brandon Moon's appeal and brought to light that Brandon Moon was in prison for a rape he never committed. At the time this came to a head, Mr. Moon was on his seventeenth year of a seventy-five year sentence.

On October 23, 2006, Mr. Brandon Moon, after being fully exonerated by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, filed a Federal Civil Rights lawsuit in US District Court in San Antonio, Texas, naming, amongst others, Jaime Esparza and his chief appellate attorney, John Davis (who still works there) as defendants.

Although Mr. Moon was tried and convicted under my opponent's predecessor, a major part of Mr. Moon's grievances against the system are actually lodged against my opponent's office specifically his Appellate Chief, assistant DA John Davis. His complaint outlines how exculpatory DNA evidence was not produced.

According to Mr. Moon's complaint, in 1996, well into Mr. Esparza's first term, Mr. Esparza's office submitted samples from the crime scene for DNA testing to DPS. This was done without the knowledge of Mr. Moon or his lawyers who only learned about it in 2004, eight years later. And then only when Moon's lawyer filed an open records request with DPS who turned over their report. "But the results of this round of testing were, like the Lifecodes results, of little probative value on their own. This is because, while the El Paso District Attorney's Office submitted the crime scene evidence for testing, it appears to have failed to ever submit any reference samples from any of the parties for comparison...-despite the DPS' analyst's direct request for those samples upon completing the preliminary testing on the evidence itself." The analyst reported that .."'the semen donor on the comforter is different from the semen donor on the robe and the vaginal secretions.'" Brandon Moon Complaint SA-06-CA0925

Mr. Moon goes on to allege that the DA's office under Esparza never submitted the reference samples requested from DPS nor did they tell Brandon Moon of this report.

Had Mr. Moon not been persistent and had he not had such a diligent lawyer who unearthed the DPS report how many more years would he have sat in prison? Would he ever have gotten out?

Stay tuned for Part II tomorrow. At the end of this series, I will make available the entire complaint for you to read for yourselves. What you will also see later in the week are some of Mr. Esparza's attempts to distance himself from the events for which his office is being sued and for which we as the taxpayer are picking up the tab.