New trial denied for case of teen who killed parents

Now we're going to talk about this young man here. There's a bit of an old picture here, right? So this is going to take you back to 2016, when A.J. Armstrong went on trial for the first time, accused of killing his parents. Now, it would take three trials before he was convicted, but now his legal team was looking here to get a fourth. McKenna Earnhardt joining us now with details on that. McKenna, fill us in. Yeah, Anthony, after a day of witness testimony, a Harris County judge has denied the defense's motion for a new trial for A.J. Armstrong. Now, Armstrong is serving life behind bars after being convicted in August of 2023 for fatally shooting his parents, Don and Antonio Armstrong Sr., inside their Houston home back in 2016. That conviction came down only after two previous trials ended in deadlocked juries. The key breakthrough for prosecutors in that third trial was testimony from forensic expert Celestina Rossi, who linked microscopic specks of blood found on Armstrong's shirt to his father years after the crime. Armstrong's defense team brought the case back before a judge this week, arguing they deserved a brand new trial because prosecutors failed to disclose an internal complaint filed against Rossi. Information they claim could have altered how they challenged her credibility on the stand. During the hearing, state prosecutors testified they didn't even know about that dismissed complaint until after the guilty verdict. Ultimately, Judge Kelly Johnson ruled the complaint was unproven and wouldn't have disqualified Rossi from testifying and showed no bias against Armstrong. specific to this case one of the most important things we're trying to express is that we as a defense the trial team made a decision not to pursue that hearing based on our trial strategy and we would have changed that if the state took the time to discover the evidence we're talking about here and gave it to us so that's really important to hearing the pats talking about we could have attempted to keep the evidence out in front of the judge and that would have been a point of appeal if she let it in so we did not have that information and based on not having that information, we made a very difficult and important decision in this case. Harris County District Attorney Sean Teer stood by the conviction, calling the 2023 guilty verdict righteous and pledging that his office will continue defending it through every stage of the appeal. Now, defense attorney Rick DeToto made it clear that this fight is far from over. The defense plans to take this ruling right back to the Texas 14th Court of Appeals, where they anticipate a formal decision by spring of 2027. Anthony. All right, McKenna, thank you so much. That case has been going on for quite some time, 10 years now. AJ Armstrong's name has been in the news. McKenna, thank you so much.