A.J. Armstrong Is Back in a Harris County Court Tuesday, Asking for a Fourth Trial
A judge will hear arguments Tuesday on whether A.J. Armstrong gets a new trial for the 2016 murders of his parents - a hearing the state's highest criminal court refused to stop, built around a complaint against one of the prosecution's expert witnesses that the defense says it never saw before the verdict.
A hearing will be held Tuesday to decide whether A.J. Armstrong will be granted a new trial for the 2016 murder of his parents at their Houston home, FOX 26 Houston reported. If the new trial is granted, it would be Armstrong's fourth trial. In September, the 14th Texas Court of Criminal Appeals sent the case back to the trial court for a hearing on the motion for a new trial, where Armstrong's defense team can present evidence. The Harris County District Attorney's Office asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals - the state's highest court for criminal cases - to stop the hearing; on September 17, that court denied the request.
At issue, defense attorney Rick DeToto told FOX 26, is a complaint filed by a doctor unrelated to the Armstrong case against one of the state's expert witnesses, alleging she fabricated or planted evidence. DeToto said the defense did not know about that report until after the trial, and that the report would have affected the defense's decisions during the trial.
Armstrong was found guilty of capital murder by a Harris County jury in August 2023, after a third trial, and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 40 years. It was the third time he had been tried for the murders: the first trial, in 2019, ended with a hung jury after two weeks of testimony, and the second, in 2022, also ended without a verdict and was declared a mistrial.
On July 29, 2016, Dawn and Antonio Armstrong Sr. were shot dead in their bed at their home on Palmetto Street near Mapleridge Street, in the Gulfton area close to Bellaire. Armstrong, who was 16 at the time, made the 911 call that night. Prosecutors argued at trial that he held a pillow over his parents' faces and shot them both, which Armstrong denied. The third trial's focus was two specks of blood found on Armstrong's shirt seven years later; DeToto has said the dried blood is likely there because of cross-contamination. Armstrong has also filed a lawsuit against the City of Houston claiming the blood flakes were planted. Tuesday's hearing decides only the new-trial motion - but it decides whether one of Houston's most argued-over cases goes in front of a jury again.
