Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza is pushing back after a new Greg Abbott campaign ad used the dismissal of a decades-old Austin murder case against him. The ad targets Garza over his office's decision to drop the charge against Allen Andre Causey, who spent 30 years in prison for the 1991 killing of Anita Byington before being exonerated. Garza says Causey was wrongfully convicted of a crime he did not commit, and that the case should never have ended his way in the first place.
Causey was charged with Byington's murder in 1991 and convicted the following year, a conviction built on a confession he signed. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison and ultimately served 30 years before his 2022 parole. According to KXAN Austin, Garza's office says Causey's conviction was overturned in 2025 by the all-Republican Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which the DA's office frames as evidence the case against Causey had fundamentally collapsed.
What the Courts Actually Found
The legal record is more layered than either side's talking points suggest. A Travis County district court held innocence hearings in November 2023 and January 2024, and ultimately found the evidence sufficient to recommend a new trial — but not sufficient to declare Causey actually innocent. As statesman.com reported, the judge said there wasn't enough evidence to completely rule out his involvement in the crime and did not find he was actually innocent.
When the case reached the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the court pointed to new evidence that included DNA implicating an alternate suspect, witness testimony contradicting parts of Causey's confession, and allegations of police misconduct. Per fox7austin.com, the court did not find that the evidence showed Causey to be actually innocent but found that habeas relief should be granted based on the state's unknowing use of false testimony. That distinction — relief for a flawed trial rather than a formal innocence finding — is central to how each side is now characterizing the outcome.
Appeals court rulings declaring actual innocence are extremely rare, since that finding typically requires evidence that clearly exonerates a defendant. Causey's case didn't clear that bar. Instead, the appeals court deemed his original confession false testimony, which investigators have said was potentially coerced by an Austin police sergeant with a history of obtaining false confessions.
DNA Pointed to Another Suspect
Part of what unraveled the case was DNA evidence tied to an alternative suspect. Statesman.com's earlier reporting noted that prosecutors identified Kevin Harris, who was last seen with Byington, as a possible alternative suspect, and that further DNA analysis implicated Harris while excluding Causey. An expert in false confessions also testified in court that it was highly likely Causey's confession was false or unreliable, according to cbsaustin.com.
Garza's office says prosecutors are now pursuing charges against an alternate suspect known to investigators, even as it declined to retry Causey and ultimately dismissed the charge against him. In a statement, Garza said the family of Anita Byington deserves justice, and Mr. Causey deserves peace — an attempt to thread a case that produced no clean resolution for anyone involved.
The Campaign Ad and Its Pushback
The Abbott campaign's ad features Kristina Byington, Anita's cousin, criticizing Garza's decision. According to the Greg Abbott campaign, Kristina Byington has said she feels personally victimized all over again by the Innocence Project and the Travis County District Attorney's Office, pointing to the failure of Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza to keep her cousin's murderer behind bars.
Eduardo Leal, the Abbott campaign's press secretary, said Garza repeatedly failed to deliver justice for Texas families like Kristina Byington's and let convicted criminals, including murderers, back onto the streets in the name of social justice. Leal added that Abbott intends to hold rogue district attorneys accountable if reelected, framing the Causey case as part of a broader law-and-order message heading into the election.
The dispute also echoes a wider review underway in Travis County. The DA's office and the Innocence Project of Texas received a federal grant to re-examine Austin Police Department homicide cases from 1985 to 1995, with particular attention to interrogation practices — the same era, and the same kind of confession-based conviction, at the heart of the Causey case. For now, the legal chapter is closed with a dismissal rather than a declaration of innocence, leaving the political chapter to play out in campaign ads instead of courtrooms.
