A Liberty County judge has zeroed in on possible mishandling of evidence in the 2015 murder case of Brandon Lee Jenkins, a twist that his family believes could finally crack open a path to relief after more than a decade behind bars. Jenkins, convicted in 2015 and serving a 99-year sentence, now has a judge openly questioning how items were removed from the victim’s body and why a cell phone mentioned to jurors never made it into the official evidence file.
Judge flags evidence problems in old trial
In a recent order, the judge found that items were taken from the victim’s body before law enforcement properly secured the crime scene and that a missing cell phone was brought up during prosecutors’ opening statements without being formally disclosed to the defense. Jenkins’ family and legal team argue that those details could matter a lot for his long-standing self-defense claim, according to Click2Houston. With those concerns now on the record, the case has been sent to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for a fresh look.
What happened at trial and on appeal
Jenkins was convicted in Liberty County in 2015 for the fatal shooting of Tracy Holmes and received a 99-year prison sentence, as reported at the time by the Houston Chronicle. A few years later, an appeals court signed off on that verdict. In a 2017 opinion, the Eighth Court of Appeals laid out neighbors’ accounts, shell casings found at the scene, and Jenkins’ claim that he fired in self-defense, according to the published court opinion on Justia.
Family's decade-long fight
For Jenkins’ relatives, this latest ruling is not just another legal filing, it is the kind of development they say they have chased for more than ten years. The family says they have poured time, money, and energy into getting anyone in the system to reconsider the case. His sister, Ashley Thomas, told Click2Houston that “he’s been saying this for 11 years,” repeating the family’s position that Jenkins was acting in self-defense.
Where the case goes next
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals will now decide what to do with the judge’s findings. The court can choose to review the case in depth, send it back for more hearings, or deny relief altogether, and it is the only state court that can grant post-conviction habeas relief in felony cases, according to the court’s own description of its powers on txcourts.gov. Texas appellate decisions draw a sharp line between evidence that is clearly “material exculpatory” when it goes missing and evidence that is only “potentially useful,” which usually requires proof of bad faith by the state. That distinction shows up in cases such as Justia, where courts look at whether the importance of a lost item, such as a cell-phone recording, was obvious at the time.
Why small details can change a case
Defense attorneys like to say that murder trials can turn on the tiniest details, and this case is a good reminder why. When a shooting comes down to clashing stories about who pulled a weapon first, gaps in the chain of custody or problems securing a crime scene can cast a long shadow over a verdict. As the Court of Criminal Appeals weighs what to do, the judge’s order virtually guarantees that the old record will be picked over line by line, and any ruling could echo beyond Liberty County if it pushes Texas courts to sharpen the rules for handling and disclosing potentially exculpatory evidence.
