The U.S. Supreme Court has denied an appeal from Charles Don Flores, a Texas death row inmate who challenged his conviction in the 1998 Farmers Branch murder of Elizabeth “Betty” Black by arguing that a central eyewitness identification was tainted by investigative hypnosis.

The denial appeared on the court’s June 15 order list under Flores v. Texas, docket No. 25-6774. As is common when the justices decline to hear a case, the order gave no explanation and did not include a written dissent. The effect is to leave in place the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’ refusal to reopen Flores’ latest challenge to his conviction and death sentence.

Flores was convicted of capital murder in 1999 in Dallas County and sentenced to death. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice identifies him as having been received on death row on April 2, 1999, after the Jan. 29, 1998 offense. The department’s case summary says Flores and co-defendant Richard Lynn Childs broke into Black’s Farmers Branch home during a search for money and that Black, 64, was shot with a pistol.

The case has drawn renewed attention because of the role of Jill Barganier, a neighbor who saw two men enter Black’s home the morning of the killing. According to Flores’ petition and reporting on the case, Barganier initially described the men as white and having long hair. Flores is Hispanic and, according to the appeal, had short hair at the time. Barganier also did not identify Flores in a photo lineup before later identifying him in court.

Flores’ lawyers argued that the shift in Barganier’s account followed a hypnosis session performed by Farmers Branch police officer Alfredo Roen Serna, who was involved in the investigation. Flores’ petition said the officer had not previously performed hypnosis. The defense argued that the procedure increased the risk of suggestion, false confidence and contaminated memory, making the later courtroom identification unreliable in a capital case.

The appeal asked the Supreme Court to intervene after Texas courts declined to review Flores’ claims under the state’s so-called junk science law, which allows some defendants to challenge convictions when relevant scientific evidence has changed or when previously unavailable scientific evidence undermines evidence used at trial. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals concluded Flores had not met the state-law threshold for relief, including requirements tied to newly available evidence.

Flores’ lawyers framed the case around a broader question: whether a defendant sentenced to death can obtain review when a conviction rests partly on a technique later rejected by the state that prosecuted him. They argued that eyewitness-memory science has moved sharply against forensic hypnosis as a reliable investigative tool, especially when used by law enforcement officers rather than medical professionals and when followed by later identification testimony.

Texas law now treats such evidence differently than it did at the time of Flores’ trial. Senate Bill 338, enacted in 2023 and effective Sept. 1 of that year, added restrictions on statements obtained by investigative hypnosis. The enrolled law defines investigative hypnosis as a law-enforcement technique that uses hypnosis to explore a witness’s memory and enhance recall of legally relevant events, including descriptions of people and the environment. It makes covered statements inadmissible against a defendant in a criminal trial if the hypnosis session was performed by a law enforcement agency investigating the offense at issue.

But the statute applies to criminal proceedings that commence on or after its effective date. For proceedings that began earlier, the law says admissibility is governed by the rules in effect when those proceedings commenced. That prospective language has been central to Flores’ difficulty in using the 2023 ban to reopen a 1999 conviction.

Flores’ case also involves the conduct and later status of Childs, the co-defendant. Childs was connected to a distinctive Volkswagen seen near Black’s home, and Flores’ supporters have pointed to Childs’ later role in the case as part of their argument that Flores was wrongly implicated. The Dallas Observer reported that Childs later admitted to being the shooter as part of a plea agreement that resulted in a 35-year sentence for murder rather than a capital murder conviction.

The state’s position has been that Flores was convicted under Texas law for his role in a burglary and murder, and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice summary continues to list Flores and Childs as having murdered Black during the course of the burglary. The Supreme Court’s denial does not revisit those factual disputes or evaluate the evidence. It simply means the justices declined to take up the procedural and constitutional questions Flores presented.

For Flores, the denial is a serious setback but not necessarily the end of all litigation. His attorney, Gretchen Sween, said after the ruling that the conviction rests on testimony now barred from Texas courtrooms and that she would continue pursuing available avenues to prove his innocence. She also criticized the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for what she characterized as barriers that prevent death-sentenced prisoners with innocence claims from presenting evidence before execution.

The ruling also arrives amid a wider national debate over capital punishment, eyewitness identification and post-conviction review. Courts have long treated eyewitness testimony as powerful evidence for juries, but researchers and innocence advocates have increasingly warned that memory can be altered by suggestion, stress, poor viewing conditions and law enforcement procedures. Hypnosis has become especially controversial because it can raise a witness’s confidence without necessarily improving accuracy.

For Texas, the case highlights a gap between present-day evidentiary rules and older convictions. The Legislature’s 2023 hypnosis law shows that the state has moved away from allowing law-enforcement hypnosis statements in new criminal trials. Flores’ case tests whether defendants convicted before that shift can obtain relief when their cases involved the same technique. The Supreme Court’s answer this week was procedural rather than substantive: it declined to step in, leaving the next moves to Flores’ legal team and the Texas courts.