A man who has spent more than 20 years on death row is again challenging his conviction, insisting he has been innocent ever since he was found guilty in 1999.
Betty Black, 64, was killed in her Farmer’s Branch, Texas home in January 1998 during what authorities described as an attempted robbery.
Richard Childs later admitted to the murder and received a 35-year prison sentence. After serving part of that term, he was released on parole in 2016.
Childs’ co-defendant, Charles Flores, did not receive the same outcome. Flores was sentenced to death in 1999 and has remained on death row since then.
A central witness in Flores’ trial was Black’s neighbor, Jill Barganier. She testified that she was completely certain she saw Flores enter Black’s home on the day Black was killed.
Her identification was considered especially influential because prosecutors did not present physical evidence directly linking Flores to the crime.
Flores has sought to overturn his conviction multiple times, Slate reported, and he has now submitted a petition asking the Supreme Court to review the case.
Maintaining he had no role in Black’s death, Flores argues that Barganier’s statements were shaped through “investigative hypnosis,” a technique purportedly used to help a witness recall details that may have been forgotten.
Any testimony given under investigative hypnosis should be “verified with supporting physical or testimonial evidence”, the Department of Justice said back in 1979, adding that “investigative conclusion should not be based solely on hypnotically obtained information”.
According to the filing, Barganier initially described seeing two white men with long hair and similar builds stepping out of a car near Black’s home. Flores, however, is Hispanic and had short hair at the time.
Barganier also worked with a police sketch artist to create a drawing of the person she said she saw going into the house—an image that, Flores’ supporters say, did not resemble him either.
In 2023, Texas enacted a law addressing investigative hypnosis, stating that a statement made during or after such hypnosis “is not admissible against a defendant in a criminal trial, whether offered in the guilt or innocence phase or the punishment phase of the trial, if the hypnotic session giving rise to the statement was performed by a law enforcement agency to investigate the offense that is the subject of the trial”.
Even with that change in state law and Flores’ continued appeals, investigators have insisted Barganier’s testimony was not the only factor in the case.
A former narcotics sergeant at the time of Black’s murder told NBC News: “There’s more facts to this case than just a hypnotism.”