The principal issues are (1) whether Blair is procedurally barred from a second mandamus petition seeking to order the comptroller to compensate him for a wrongful capital-murder conviction proved by DNA evidence and (2) whether his current incarceration for four child-molestation convictions (he confessed nine years after his murder conviction to molesting a witness's children) bar compensation for years he spent on death row before those convictions. Acting on Blair's initial request for compensation, the comptroller rejected it, reasoning in part that the Legislature intended to compensate only wrongfully imprisoned inmates who were freed and in part because he served concurrent sentences for parole revocation his capital-murder case triggered. The Supreme Court denied Blair's first mandamus petition. Then Blair tried again after the Court decided In re Billy James Smith last year. Smith held that the Tim Cole Act did not bar compensation because of a concurrent sentence from parole revocation because of the wrongful conviction. The comptroller rejected that request, reasoning that his arguments were the same as before.

The principal issues are (1) whether the comptroller in making payment to a former prisoner for wrongful incarceration has discretion to adjust reimbursement for a prisoner's court-ordered child-support arrearages and (2) whether the comptroller, by adjusting its payment to an amount different from what a court ordered as past-due child support, violated the separation-of-powers doctrine by collaterally attacking the court's order. In this case Phillips, who spent almost 25 years in prison for sexual assaults DNA proved he did not commit, sued the state to include in his Tim Cole Act reimbursement a portion of $305,000 in child support a Bexar County court calculated he owed his ex-wife, most of it while he was imprisoned. The comptroller determined he only owed $18,500, an amount that Arkansas - where the divorce decree originated - calculated he owed before it closed its case to collect the support while Phillips was in prison. Phillips's ex-wife sued in Bexar County to calculate the arrearage, which determined Phillips owed $305,000. By this mandamus petition, Phillips seeks $246,000 from the comptroller for unpaid child support that accumulated while he was in prison.