IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

No. 15-20475

JACOB ESTRADA, 

 Plaintiff - Appellant

v.

JOHN FRANCIS HEALEY, JR.; MARK HAROLD HANNA, 

 Defendants - Appellees

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the Southern District of Texas

USDC No. 4:15-CV-92

Before STEWART, Chief Judge, and JONES and DENNIS, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:*

Plaintiff-Appellant Jacob Estrada (“Estrada”) is a former Texas inmate

who pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance and was sentenced 

to an eight-year prison term. Estrada alleges that following his conviction, the 

district attorney’s office that prosecuted him—the Fort Bend County, Texas,

District Attorney’s Office—learned of exculpatory evidence in his case but

failed to disclose it to him in a timely fashion. The State of Texas ultimately 

 

* Pursuant to 5TH CIR. R. 47.5, the court has determined that this opinion should not 

be published and is not precedent except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5TH 

CIR. R. 47.5.4.

United States Court of Appeals

Fifth Circuit

FILED

April 27, 2016

Lyle W. Cayce

Clerk

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overturned Estrada’s conviction in habeas corpus proceedings based on that 

exculpatory evidence; this suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 followed. 

Citing Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), Estrada claims on appeal

that Defendants-Appellees District Attorney John Healey, Jr. (“Healey”) and 

Assistant District Attorney Mark Hanna (“Hanna”) violated his due process 

rights by allegedly withholding exculpatory evidence discovered after his 

conviction and therefore delaying his release from prison. The district court

dismissed Estrada’s due process claim, concluding, inter alia, that Hanna and 

Healey were entitled to qualified immunity. Because the Supreme Court has 

declined to extend Brady to the post-conviction context and Estrada fails to

otherwise demonstrate a violation of a clearly established right, we AFFIRM.

I.

This case concerns the actions of the Fort Bend County, Texas, District 

Attorney’s Office in response to revelations of the misconduct of Jonathan 

Salvador (“Salvador”), a forensic scientist formerly with the Texas Department 

of Public Safety (“DPS”). Salvador was responsible for testing drug samples 

from criminal suspects but was caught falsifying samples in early 2012. 

Estrada’s 2007 prosecution for possession of a controlled substance was 

amongst the cases potentially impacted by Salvador’s misconduct—Salvador 

prepared the lab report in Estrada’s case and the parties relied upon this report 

during plea bargaining. The district court’s opinion provides a thorough 

recitation of the facts alleged in the complaint; here we briefly recount the 

portions relevant to this appeal. 

DPS first became aware that Salvador had falsified test results in a

criminal case in February 2012, and it subsequently notified district attorney’s 

offices throughout Texas. DPS stated that it would re-analyze the evidence in 

certain cases. Hanna and Healey received this communication but did not 

notify Estrada. Later, in April 2012, DPS notified district attorney’s offices 

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potentially affected by Salvador’s misconduct—including the Fort Bend 

County District Attorney’s Office—that: (1) it had found multiple instances of 

Salvador’s misconduct; (2) it deemed it “prudent to review his entire body of 

work”; and (3) it e-mailed each office a spreadsheet of the criminal defendants 

whose cases were affected; this spreadsheet included Estrada’s case. Though 

some district attorney’s offices promptly notified the affected individuals, the 

Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office chose not to and instead sought to 

have the samples retested. Estrada’s sample, however, was destroyed in July 

2012 pursuant to a judicial order.1

On July 24, 2012, DPS provided the Fort Bend County District 

Attorney’s Office with a report issued by the DPS Office of the Inspector 

General. The report explained that Salvador had been fired by DPS for “drylabbing”—essentially, Salvador reported finding contraband in criminal cases 

without actually conducting an analysis of the samples provided to him. No 

one from the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office apprised Estrada of 

the findings in this report.

After a March 6, 2013, decision by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals 

(“TCCA”) granted habeas relief to a criminal defendant whose case was 

affected by Salvador’s misconduct, defendant Healey contacted Estrada for the 

first time and sent two letters on March 14: one to Estrada advising him of the 

TCCA opinion, but not explaining that the evidence in his case had been 

destroyed, and one to Estrada’s trial counsel allegedly stating that Healey’s 

office requested that DPS retest the evidence in Estrada’s case and that they 

would forward the results once received. In April 2013, a report from the Texas 

Forensic Science Commission publicly condemning Salvador’s actions led to 

 

1 The order to destroy the evidence in Estrada’s case was issued in October 2011, i.e.,

before the revelations about Salvador’s misconduct came to light. 

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local media coverage of Salvador’s misconduct. During the following months, 

the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office allegedly took no action to 

notify any affected criminal defendants and would not release the names of 

those affected to the local criminal defense bar. The Fort Bend County 

Criminal Defense Association was eventually able to obtain the names of the 

affected criminal defendants in July 2013, and in August 2013, Estrada was 

provided appointed counsel.

Estrada filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in state court in 

October 2013. Healey’s office initially filed an answer opposing habeas relief, 

but in December 2013 reversed course and indicated that it would not oppose 

relief “in the interest of judicial economy.” In February 2014, however, the 

TCCA remanded the case to the trial court due to the State’s lack of specificity 

in not opposing habeas relief. After proceedings and fact-finding at the trial 

court, in June 2014 the TCCA issued an opinion granting Estrada habeas relief 

and overturning his conviction.

Estrada then filed this § 1983 action against Hanna and Healey in their 

individual and official capacities in state court, which they timely removed to 

federal court. Estrada alleged that the defendants violated his rights under 

the Due Process Clause and Eighth Amendment by failing to disclose the 

exculpatory evidence of Salvador’s misconduct in a timely fashion in violation 

of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963). Hanna and Healey moved to 

dismiss, asserting Eleventh Amendment immunity as well as absolute and 

qualified immunity. The district court granted the motion, holding that 

Supreme Court precedent dictates that there is no prosecutorial duty under 

Brady to disclose exculpatory evidence in the post-conviction context. 

Consequently, the district court held that Healey and Hanna were entitled to 

qualified immunity as to Estrada’s individual-capacity claims, and, in the 

alternative, that they were entitled to absolute prosecutorial immunity. 

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Finally, the court held that, whether construed as an action against the State 

of Texas, the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office, or Fort Bend County 

itself, Estrada’s official capacity claims were not colorable. 

On appeal, Estrada challenges only the district court’s conclusions 

regarding Healey’s and Hanna’s entitlement to absolute and qualified 

immunity on his due process claim.2 He argues that Healey and Hanna (1) are 

not entitled to qualified immunity because Brady and its progeny establish a 

prosecutorial duty to disclose exculpatory evidence that extends to the postconviction context and their derivation from this clearly established law was 

objectively unreasonable, (2) are not entitled to absolute prosecutorial 

immunity because they were not engaging in prosecutorial activity at the time 

of the alleged violation, and (3) waived absolute and qualified immunity by 

removing the case from state court to federal court.

II.

Although the facts alleged in the amended complaint are troubling, we 

hold that Healey and Hanna are entitled to qualified immunity. We therefore 

need not address Estrada’s arguments regarding absolute prosecutorial 

immunity. 

The doctrine of qualified immunity protects government officials

performing discretionary functions “from liability for civil damages insofar as 

their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional 

rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald,

457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). “The basic steps of our qualified-immunity inquiry 

are well-known: a plaintiff seeking to defeat qualified immunity must show: 

‘(1) that the official violated a statutory or constitutional right, and (2) that the 

right was ‘clearly established’ at the time of the challenged conduct.’” Morgan 

 

2 Estrada does not raise the dismissal of his Eighth Amendment claim on appeal.

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v. Swanson, 659 F.3d 359, 371 (5th Cir. 2011) (en banc) (quoting Ashcroft v. alKidd, 131 S. Ct. 2074, 2080 (2011)). “We may address either prong first.” Cole 

v. Carson, 802 F.3d 752, 757 (5th Cir. 2015).

Estrada fails to establish that Healey or Hanna violated a “clearly 

established” right. “To be clearly established, a right must be sufficiently clear 

that every reasonable official would have understood that what he is doing 

violates that right.” Reichle v. Howards, 132 S. Ct. 2088, 2093 (2012) (brackets

and internal quotation marks omitted). “When properly applied, [qualified 

immunity] protects ‘all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly 

violate the law.’” al–Kidd, 131 S. Ct. at 2085 (quoting Malley v. Briggs, 475 

U.S. 335, 341 (1986)). “We do not require a case directly on point, but existing 

precedent must have placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond 

debate.” Id. at 2083. 

Estrada cites no case law establishing a due process right to the timely 

disclosure of exculpatory evidence discovered after his conviction, i.e., 

Salvador’s misconduct. Instead, he relies exclusively on the rule announced in 

Brady that due process requires a prosecutor to disclose material, exculpatory 

evidence to a defendant before trial. See Brady, 373 U.S. at 87. His argument 

is undercut by the Supreme Court’s decision in District Attorney’s Office for the 

Third Judicial District v. Osborne, which explicitly declined to extend Brady’s 

pre-trial protections to the post-conviction context. 557 U.S. 52, 68–69 (2009).3 

 

3 In his appellate brief, Estrada alludes to Healey and Hanna having knowledge of 

Salvador’s misconduct prior to his conviction. However, he does not pursue this argument 

on appeal—instead, he states that “[t]he issue in this case is whether a prosecutor has a duty 

under Brady to disclose Brady material to a defendant after a conviction.” And, regardless, 

even if Hanna and Healey were aware of the exculpatory evidence of Salvador’s misconduct 

pre-conviction, Estrada waived his right to raise a Brady violation when he pleaded guilty. 

See United States v. Conroy, 567 F.3d 174, 178 (5th Cir. 2009) (“[A] guilty plea precludes the 

defendant from asserting a Brady violation.”); Matthew v. Johnson, 201 F.3d 353, 361–62 

(5th Cir. 2000) (“Because a Brady violation is defined in terms of the potential effects of 

undisclosed information on a judge’s or jury’s assessment of guilt, it follows that the failure 

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In noting that “Brady is the wrong framework” for analyzing a criminal 

defendant’s liberty interest in obtaining exculpatory evidence in the postconviction context, the Court stated that the pertinent inquiry is whether a 

State’s post-conviction procedures are “fundamentally inadequate to vindicate 

the substantive rights provided.” Id. Estrada has not advanced such a claim, 

and, indeed, Estrada’s rights were vindicated when Texas’s post-conviction 

process resulted in overturning his conviction and his release from prison. 

Although Estrada takes great pains to distinguish Osborne and press his 

due process argument under Brady, he points to no existing precedent 

“plac[ing] the . . . constitutional question beyond debate.”4 al–Kidd, 131 S. Ct. 

at 2083. Appellees are therefore entitled to qualified immunity.5

III.

The district court’s judgment is AFFIRMED.

 

of a prosecutor to disclose exculpatory information to an individual waiving his right to trial 

is not a constitutional violation.”).

4 In the portion of his brief discussing absolute immunity, Estrada does cite two cases 

analyzing efforts by prosecutors to suppress potentially exculpatory evidence in the postconviction context; however, neither case supports Estrada’s qualified immunity argument. 

In Houston v. Partee, the Seventh Circuit held that prosecutors who discovered exculpatory 

evidence while a criminal appeal was pending were not entitled to absolute immunity but 

noted that the prosecutors were entitled to assert qualified immunity on remand. 978 F.2d 

362, 368–69 (7th Cir. 1992). In Peterson v. Bernardi, the court held that a prosecutor who 

opposed post-conviction DNA evidence testing was entitled to qualified immunity. 719 F. 

Supp. 2d 419, 437–38 (D.N.J. 2010). 5 Estrada also makes the strange argument that Hanna and Healey waived their 

entitlement to qualified immunity by removing the case from state court to federal court. 

This contention warrants little discussion. In support of his argument, Estrada cites the

Supreme Court’s statement in Lapides v. Board of Regents of University System of Georgia

“that a State’s voluntary appearance in federal court amount[s] to a waiver of its Eleventh 

Amendment immunity.” 535 U.S. 613, 619 (2002). Estrada erroneously confuses a state’s 

sovereign immunity under the Eleventh Amendment and a government official’s qualified 

immunity from individual suit. 

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