Whether Article 64, as authoritatively construed by the CCA, violates due process by arbitrarily denying prisoners access to postconviction DNA testing, rendering illusory prisoners' state-created right to prove their innocence through newly discovered evidence

In 2023, th e Court reversed the Fifth Circuit’s holding that Rodney Reed’s DNA -testing suit was untimely and rejected District Attorney Bryan Goertz’s jurisdictional arguments . Reed v. Goertz , 598 U.S. 230 (2023). The case now returns on the merits, as Goertz continues refus ing to test the murder weapon. Reed has been on death row for over a quarter century for a crime he steadfastly maintain s he didn’t commit. Since he was convicted, Reed has amassed a “substantial body of evidence” refuting the state’s theory of the case . Reed v. Texas , 140 S. Ct. 686, 689 (2020) (statement of Sotomayor, J., respecting the denial of certiorari). Despite the resulting “pall of uncertainty over Reed’s conviction,” id. at 690, Goertz refuse s to DNA -test the murder weapon —testing that Reed ’s attorneys have offered to pay for and that could prove his innocence. Instead, Goertz r elies on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeal ’s (CCA) authoritative construction of Texas ’s postconviction DNA -testing statute, Article 64 of the Texas Code of Crim inal Procedure , to insist that Reed isn’t entitled to DNA testing . The CCA’s construction rests , among other things, on the notion that potentially “contaminated” evidence cannot yield probative DNA results —a notion that science disproves and that Texas itself rejects in many cases when seeking to prove guilt . The question presented is whether Article 64, as authoritatively construed by the CCA, violates due process by arbitrarily denying prisoners access to postconviction DNA testing, render ing illusory prisoners’ state -created right to prove their innocence through newly discovered evidence .