Reuters posts, "Capital mistake?" by Terry Baynes.
In his career as a Columbia Law professor, James Liebman has penned his share of technical law review articles arguing against capital punishment. But to illustrate how the justice system could execute an innocent man, Liebman wanted a more visceral reaction from readers. To get it, he teamed up with a group of his students and after some extensive research, homed in on the case of Carlos DeLuna, a poor Hispanic with an IQ of 72 who was executed in Texas in 1989 for the stabbing death of a gas station clerk in Corpus Christi.
The resulting narrative reads like more like Norman Mailer's "Executioner's Song" than your typical Columbia Human Rights Law Review entry. The journal published the article today, along with an innovative interactive website that allows readers to review every piece of evidence in the case online, from police audiotape and trial transcripts to crime scene photos and video interviews. "Presented that way, people can make a judgment for themselves," said Liebman.
"Report says Texas executed an innocent man," is the UPI report.
A 400-page article in Columbia University's Columbia Human Rights Law Review asserts Texas convicted and executed the wrong man in a 1983 killing.
The article examines the arrest, prosecution and 1989 execution of Carlos DeLuna in the death of Wanda Lopez, 24, who was fatally stabbed during a robbery at a Corpus Christi gas station, the Houston Chronicle reported.
In prosecuting, DeLuna, the state bypassed Carlos Hernandez, a man who the article said had bragged about killing Lopez and laughed about DeLuna being convicted of the crime.
Today's Houston Chronicle reports, "Eyewitness procedure flawed in DeLuna murder case, lawmakers say," by Allan Turner. It's also available at the Hearst sister-paper, the San Antonio Express-News.
Legislative sponsors of a law tightening procedures for police lineups on Tuesday faulted Corpus Christi police for allowing eyewitnesses in a 1983 convenience store robbery-murder to identify the suspect as he sat handcuffed in the back seat of a squad car.
State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, and Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, stopped short of claiming Texas wrongfully executed suspect Carlos DeLuna for the February 1983 murder of store clerk Wanda Lopez.
Gallego, however, said the way Corpus Christi police handled the suspect's identification was a "textbook example" of why the system needs to be reformed.
"What appears to be very faulty eyewitness identification was the main evidence used to reach a conviction in this case," Ellis said in an email.
"... The chief witness appears to have gone back and forth on how certain he was that Mr. DeLuna was the culprit. You cannot have this level of uncertainty in death penalty cases."
"Columbia Human Rights Law Review releases study on Corpus Christi man executed in 1989," by Michelle Villarreal in the Corpus Christi Caller Times.
Carlos DeLuna, executed in 1989 for the murder of a Corpus Christi woman, was innocent, a 400-page report released Tuesday states.
The Columbia Human Rights Law Review report detailed the events of his July 1983 trial for the death of Wanda Lopez and how he was wrongly executed.
Columbia Law School professor James Liebman and students conducted the study to contribute to a public debate of the death penalty specifically arguing that it is an ineffective form of punishment, Liebman said.
The DeLuna case was chosen after Liebman did a study on courts across the country and how they handled legal error. Executions piqued his interest and he started looking at Texas death penalty cases.
“One of the very first cases we came across was the Carlos DeLuna case, who said all along that another man murdered the woman,” Liebman said.
Slate posts, "Report: Texas Executed Innocent Man," by Rachael Levy.
Carlos DeLuna maintained his innocence from the moment he was arrested in 1983 for the stabbing death of a young Texas woman right up until he was executed six years later. On Monday, a Columbia University professor and a group of law students offered what appears to be definitive proof that DeLuna's mistaken-identity claims were the real deal and that an innocent man was put to death.
"10 Shocking Bits From Book About How Texas Executed an Innocent Man," by Ben Jacobs at Daily Beast. Here's the Beast's first bit:
Ignored By 911
Wanda Lopez was a divorced single mother and high-school dropout who worked the 3–10 p.m. shift behind the register at the Sigmor Shamrock gas station and convenience store. It was in a rough neighborhood in Corpus Christi, located next to a strip club called Wolfy’s. At 8:09 p.m., she called 911 in a panic. She immediately asked “[C]an you have an officer come to 2602 South Padre Island Drive? I have a suspect with a—a knife inside the store ... He’s a Mexican. He’s standing right here at the counter.” Instead, the 911 operator, Jesse Escochea, who wasn’t supposed to be answering calls and just picked up the phone because everyone else was occupied, quizzed her for 77 seconds because he thought she had “an attitude.” He didn’t dispatch a police car until after Lopez had been fatally stabbed in her chest while asking for help. It later emerged that the reason for her “attitude” was that she had previously called 911 about the same man loitering outside the door and was told to immediately call back if the man entered. If the regular 911 operator had answered, help would have come right away and Wanda Lopez might not have been stabbed.
"Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?" is Jordan Smith's Austin Chronicle report.
It’s been 23 years since Carlos De Luna was executed by lethal injection for the 1983 attempted robbery and murder of Wanda Lopez at a Corpus Christi gas station; this week, a book-length law review article was released that meticulously deconstructs the case – and makes it almost undeniable that Texas has executed an innocent man.
In the years since De Luna’s execution, serious questions have been raised about whether De Luna was actually responsible for the crime. This week, the Columbia University School of Law’s Human Rights Law Review publishes “Los Tocayos Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution,” dedicating the entire issue to unfolding the De Luna case with an eye toward what went wrong – and what the ramifications are for Texas and beyond. Indeed, the article, by Professor James Liebman and a group of law students, presents the strongest evidence yet that the state of Texas has convicted and killed an innocent man, Carlos De Luna, and failed completely to catch the real killer, Carlos Hernandez, despite compelling evidence that pointed directly to his guilt. De Luna, who repeatedly claimed innocence, was executed in 1989. “Two things are clear right off the bat,” says Liebman. “One, on the evidence [that we now have, it is clear] Carlos De Luna could never have been convicted” because there’s simply too much doubt. “Two, if that evidence had been put [to use to prosecute] Carlos Hernandez, there is no doubt [Hernandez] would have been convicted.”
Kristin Houle posts, "Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?" at Burnt Orange Report. She's the executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
Everything that could go wrong in a death penalty case did so for Carlos DeLuna, a poor Hispanic man with childlike intelligence who maintained his innocence from the time of his arrest to his execution just six years later. Among the many issues calling into question the reliability of DeLuna's conviction are:
- A single cross-ethnic eyewitness identification conducted at night, at the crime scene, while the suspect was in the back seat of a police squad car;
- No corroborating forensics and a sloppy crime scene investigation;
- Grossly inadequate representation at the trial and appellate levels, including failure of his court-appointed attorneys - one of whom had never tried a criminal case in court, let alone a capital murder case - to present any witnesses or mitigating evidence during the sentencing phase; and
- Prosecutorial failure to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence to the defense.
"New book aims to show executed man was innocent," by Melanie Eversley at USA Today.
"Questions About Another Texas Execution: Was Wrong Man Condemned?" is by Mark Memmott at NPR.
Lucy Steigerwald posts "Columbia Professor and Students Reveal Texas Justice Executed the Wrong Man in 1989," at Reason.
"Human Rights Law Review Reveals Troubling Picture of Wrongful Execution," by Jeremy Leaming at ACS.
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