Juan Balderas v. Texas

In 2014, Eduardo “Powder” Hernandez was killed. His friend, Juan Balderas, was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder, despite the fact that witnesses place Balderas far from the scene of the crime at the time of the murder. Six years after Balderas’s trial, the State belatedly disclosed extensive exculpatory and impeachment evidence going to the very heart of the State’s case. The State’s failure to have timely disclosed this critical evidence was a clear violation of its obligations under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963). Balderas successfully sought a stay of his federal habeas proceedings pursuant to Rhines v. Weber, 544 U.S. 269 (2005), to file a subsequent habeas petition in state court to exhaust five new claims based, in part, on the previously undisclosed Brady evidence and on other evidence developed by federal habeas counsel regarding Balderas’s competency to stand trial. In granting the stay, the district court held inter alia that Balderas’s five new claims were “potentially meritorious.” Balderas then filed a subsequent application for writ of habeas corpus with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (“TCCA”), setting forth in detail the constitutional violations supported by evidence neverbefore-reviewed by any Court. The TCCA, however, summarily refused to review any of the five claims on the merits. It provided one sentence: “We have reviwed the subsequent application and find that Applicant has failed to make a prima facie showing that he satisfies the requirements of Article 11.071, § 5(a).”