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Antonio “A.J.” Armstrong Jr., left, stands in a Harris County courtroom along with one of his defense attorneys.
A lawyer representing Antonio “A.J.” Armstrong Jr. — who was convicted two years ago for the 2016 murder of his parents — argued in a Houston-based appeals court Wednesday that a complaint against an expert witness in the case should have been disclosed during the capital murder trial.
Speaking before a panel of three judges for Texas’ 14th Court of Appeals, attorney Patrick F. McCann argued that the state’s failure to disclose a complaint filed against prosecutors’ expert witness could have affected the jury’s ability to judge the expert’s credibility. He is requesting a new trial for Armstrong, who was convicted of fatally shooting his parents, Antonio Armstrong Sr. and Dawn Armstrong, while they slept in their Bellaire-area home..
According to court documents, the expert witness in question — Montgomery County crime scene investigator Celastina Rossi — had a complaint filed against her in 2019, claiming that she had planted evidence in another case. The complaint was filed with the Texas Forensic Science Commission, which later dismissed the complaint, according to online records.
“Indications of her having planted evidence goes to the heart of her integrity,” McCann said in court Wednesday. “This isn’t, ‘She had a traffic ticket.’ This is not anything about, ‘She made a mistake.’ This was an allegation by a forensic scientist that she had planted evidence.”
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Assistant Harris County District Attorney Alan Curry represented the state during Wednesday’s hearing and said the prosecutors were not aware of the complaint against its witness, nor would her testimony have changed the outcome of the case. Armstrong
“The facts are clear that this house was locked tight as a drum,” Curry said. “There was no way a third party could have gotten in there, committed this crime, and did the things that we know the perpetrator did, and then left without being seen or identified by anyone.”
Armstrong Jr., 25, was charged with the murder of his parents in 2016, when he was a 16-year-old. His first two trials resulted in hung juries.
The third trial occurred in 2023 and included new evidence showing that specks of blood were found under the adhesive name tag placed on Armstrong’s clothing when he was brought to the police department for questioning in the aftermath of the murders.
Subsequent testing confirmed the DNA matched that of Armstrong’s father, Armstrong Sr. Rossi had testified to the validity of this evidence during the third trial. The jury in the third trial found Armstrong guilty, and he was sentenced to life in prison.
McCann argued that two previous trials had ended with a hung jury and that the third trial, which found Armstrong guilty, was the only trial in which the prosecution used newly discovered blood splatter evidence and Rossi’s expert testimony.
“I don’t care and you shouldn’t care whether or not they [the prosecution] were aware,” McCann said.
The panel of judges did not come to a decision Wednesday, and the next court date had not yet been listed as of Thursday afternoon.