AUSTIN (KXAN) — A man convicted of aggravated assault and sentenced to 60 years in prison, who later had his conviction overturned because of “invalid DNA evidence”, filed a lawsuit this week against the city of Austin.
The lawsuit is a “civil rights action…arising from several problems that ultimately caused Plaintiff to be convicted of aggravated assault—and sentenced to 60 years, of which he served more than 10—based on invalid DNA evidence. This use of invalid evidence was in turn due to serious, systemic deficiencies at the Austin Police Department DNA Laboratory,” the lawsuit said.
Faircloth is also suing the DNA analyst who worked his case and an Austin Police Department officer, according to the lawsuit.
KXAN has reached out to both the city of Austin and Faircloth’s attorneys. We will update this story when we receive responses from them.
Faircloth was previously accused of hitting a woman “multiple times in the head with a rock” in the parking garage of a downtown office building in 2011. That woman survived and was the only immediate witness to the assault, according to the lawsuit.
Faircloth was convicted of Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon in February 2012 and sentenced to 60 years in prison, KXAN previously reported.
He served roughly 10 of those before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Faircloth’s conviction “based on the faulty DNA evidence presented during his trial in 2012,” according to a news release from the Travis County District Attorney’s Office in 2023.
“The process to review cases stemming from the APD DNA lab involved stakeholders from the city, the county, forensic experts, the defense, and the prosecution. We believe the victim in this case was assaulted in a parking garage; however, due to the unreliability of the DNA evidence presented at trial, we cannot prove who committed the assault,” said Travis County District Attorney José Garza in 2023.
You can read more about Faircloth’s case here.
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