LIBERTY COUNTY, Texas – Texas’ highest criminal court has turned down Brandon Lee Jenkins’ latest attempt to challenge his conviction in the 2015 shooting death of his father-in-law, Tracy Odell Holmes.
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Court records show the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Jenkins’ request on June 25 without issuing a written explanation. His attorney then filed new paperwork on July 9 asking the judges to take another look.
In that filing, Jenkins’ lawyer says the court’s denial did not address earlier findings from the Liberty County trial judge who reviewed the case. The trial judge held a hearing in April and concluded there was important information the defense did not have at the time of trial—information the judge said could have mattered because Jenkins’ main argument has always been self-defense.
The filing focuses on what may have happened at the scene before deputies secured it. During the original trial, prosecutors told jurors in opening statements that Holmes’ son, Travis Holmes, took a cell phone from near his father’s body. But the filing says jurors never heard evidence to back that up, and the defense wasn’t told ahead of time that the state would raise it that way.
According to the filing, the trial judge found that Travis Holmes did remove a cell phone before police arrived and that the missing phone was never recovered. The judge also found that if something was taken from the scene, it raises questions about whether other items could have been moved—something the judge said could affect how a jury views a self-defense claim.
The trial judge’s findings also acknowledged a key wrinkle: the judge found that investigators did not know at the time of trial that anything had been removed from the body. Instead, the filing argues the prosecution had information pointing to removal and the defense didn’t get it before trial.
Jenkins’ attorney is asking the Court of Criminal Appeals to reconsider and grant a new trial.
He was convicted in 2015 and sentenced to 99 years in prison. As KPRC 2 has previously reported, Jenkins’ family has continued to push for a reexamination of the case and has argued key evidence issues affected the fairness of the trial.