Texas voters unexpectedly secured the future of actual innocence claims on November 3, shifting the balance of power on the state’s highest criminal court and averting what advocates feared would be the erosion of a vital post-conviction remedy.
Shifting Tides on the Court
Texas Monthly reported that a blue wave swept three Democrats onto the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, booting out Judge Kevin Yeary and altering a bench that had previously seemed poised to raise the legal bar for exonerations.
A Democrat hadn’t been elected to the CCA since 1994, but the recent election brings three to the court: Okey Anyiam, Audra Riley, and Holly Taylor. They will join Jesse F. McClure III, marking the first time three Black judges will serve on the nine-member court.
Gary Udashen, a board member of the Innocence Project of Texas, watched the results in surprise after warning in May at the twentieth annual Actual Innocence conference in Fort Worth that the legal concept was in jeopardy. Udashen noted that Yeary had steadily pushed back against actual innocence claims and expected incoming conservative judges to align with him. Instead, the unexpected election results removed that pressure point.
“Everybody felt pretty sure that they were going to be right there with Yeary on all of this stuff,” Udashen told Texas Monthly.
Texas has recognized actual innocence since 1996 following the Elizondo case, allowing wrongfully convicted individuals to overturn convictions, secure full exonerations, and seek millions in state compensation. To prevail, applicants must show by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable juror would have convicted them in light of new evidence. The court has granted actual innocence more than forty times in thirty years—more than any other state.
The Battle Over Judicial Standards
Despite the state’s record of exonerations, Yeary and other judges repeatedly expressed skepticism over applying the actual innocence label even when agreeing to grant new trials.
In the 2016 Sonia Cacy case, where modern science disproved out-of-date arson evidence used to convict a woman in 1993, Yeary argued against using the actual innocence designation. He took similar stances in the cases of Steven Chaney in 2019 and James Reyos, pushing for higher hurdles before the court could declare an applicant actually innocent.
When the court voted 7–2 in 2024 to grant actual innocence to Kerry Max Cook—who spent nineteen years on death row for a 1977 Tyler murder—Yeary dissented and wrote that a rational jury would still have found Cook guilty.
Judge Bert Richardson wrote in the majority opinion that Cook’s case was riddled with state misconduct, including Brady violations and perjured testimony. Richardson also pushed back against Yeary’s restrictive views, writing that Yeary’s philosophy suggested true actual innocence relief ought to be effectively unattainable in even the most shamefully wrongful convictions.
Other members of the bench shared Yeary’s skepticism. Early this year, Judge Lee Finley and Judge Gina Parker concurred and dissented when the court granted actual innocence to Carmen Mejia, a woman wrongly convicted of scalding a child to death. Finley wrote that the court should stop using the actual innocence label entirely.
Securing the Path Forward
Udashen noted that incoming Justice Holly Taylor brings direct experience from the Travis County District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit, where she investigated wrongful convictions.
“Actual innocence is not going to change,” Udashen said. “The standard is not going to change.”
Udashen emphasized that the stakes extend well beyond Texas borders. Because Texas operates as a national leader in addressing wrongful convictions through actual innocence claims, any retrenchment in the state would likely reverberate across the country.
