This morning's Chicago Tribune has part two of its three-part series on the conviction and execution of Carlos DeLuna, a likely innocent executed by Texas. LINK
Finally, jurors rejected De Luna's testimony that another man, Carlos Hernandez, was the real killer. The lead prosecutor scoffed at De Luna's assertion, calling Hernandez a "phantom."
But the jurors who found De Luna guilty and then sentenced him to death in July 1983, five months after his arrest, didn't hear the whole truth.
Hernandez did exist. Not only was he well-known to police in this Gulf Coast city as a violent felon, but the co-prosecutor at De Luna's trial and the lead detective in the case knew Hernandez too.
There is also a sidebar, "A prosecutor's silence." LINK
When lead prosecutor Steve Schiwetz told a jury that a man named Carlos Hernandez was a "phantom" and not the killer of gas station clerk Wanda Lopez, his co-prosecutor sat nearby and said nothing.
Yet Ken Botary, a veteran of the Nueces County district attorney's office, was, by his own account, well aware of Hernandez and his reputation for violent acts here.
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