Continued News Coverage of 'The Wrong Carlos'

The Week posts, "The Carlos DeLuna case: Definitive proof that Texas executed an innocent man?"

Is this irrefutable proof that an innocent man was put to death?
Yes, says Andrew Cohen at The Atlantic. After this definitive report, "no one can ever say again with a straight face that America doesn't execute innocent men. No one." This was a failure of the police, the courts, the local media, and the community. "If a new trial was somehow able to be conducted today, a jury would acquit DeLuna," Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center tells The Huffington Post. And yet, it's hard to say this proof is irrefutable. "We don't have a perfect case where can agree that we have an innocent person who's been executed, but by weight of this investigation, I think we can say this is as close as a person is going to come."

What lessons can we draw from this case?
Before this case, Liebman says, I believed botched capital punishment cases were mostly high-profile murders in which harried cops made mistakes. "Now, I think the worst cases are those that likely happen every day, in which no one cares that much about the defendant or the victim." Justice is fallible, says The Atlantic's Cohen. And "on the day, sooner than you think, when the United States Supreme Court again outlaws the death penalty, the justices will almost certainly cite the DeLuna case as one of the prime reasons why."

Time posts, "Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?"  It's by Erica Ho.

The report, Los Tocayos Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution, published by the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, was put together by Columbia Law School professor James Liebman, head of the team that investigated the case. It reviews the string of likely missteps that led to DeLuna’s execution. To begin with, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time: DeLuna happened to visit the gas station that night, Feb. 4, 1983. But while reports described the killer as a Hispanic male wearing a grey flannel shirt, DeLuna was wearing a white dress shirt the night of the attack. Despite the bloody crime scene, no blood was found on DeLuna’s body or clothes. The prosecution’s case rested mainly on the shaky testimony of a single eyewitness. All this was complicated, the report says, by botched police procedures, an ineffective defense attorney and the unwillingness of the prosecution to consider a second suspect. And the report claims there was plenty of doubt even at the time as to whether DeLuna was the culprit.

"Groundbreaking Study Questions Execution of Possibly-Innocent Texas Man," by Collean Curry at ABC News.

A brutal murder, two similar-looking suspects, and a death sentence.

For Jim Liebman, these three ingredients became the catalyst for exposing one of the judicial system's greatest risks: executing an innocent person.

In a new book-length study written by Liebman, a Columbia law professor, and six of his students and published in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, the decision to execute Carlos De Luna for the 1983 murder of a Corpus Christi gas station attendant is called into question again and again.

"This case, because it is such an everyday case, a very commonplace case, an 'everycase' if you've got problems in this kind of case that no one was paying attention to. It contributes to the wider debate about what the risks [of the death penalty] are to human life," Liebman told ABC News.

"Columbia law article says Texas executed the wrong Carlos," by Isolde Raftery at MSNBC.

The article, which took six years, one professor and 12 students to produce, reads like a true-crime novel. It begins: “Wanda Lopez died at work at a Sigmor Shamrock gas station in Corpus Christi, Texas on February 4, 1983. She was twenty-four. Wanda’s only brother, Richard Vargas, heard her say her last words, but they gave him no solace or peace. They just made him angry.

"Texas 'executed an innocent man', report claims," is the BBC News report.

"Wrong man executed: Columbia Law School challenges 23-year-old Texas verdict," at CNN.

"Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?" at the Takeaway.

"Law School Report Questions Texas Use of Death Penalty in 1983 Corpus Christi Murder," by David Martin Davies for Texas Public Radio News.

"'When human life is on the line'," by Dick Polman at WHYY-FM Newsworks.

"Carlos DeLuna And Cameron Todd Willingham: The Sad Similarities," by Jason Linkins at Huffington Post.

"Did These Columbia Law Students and Their Professor Prove That Texas Executed An Innocent Man?" by Christopher Danzig at Above the Law.

The Columbia Human Rights Law Review (HRLR)  article is Los Tocayos Carlos,

Earlier coverage of Carlos DeLuna and the HRLR article begins with the preceding post.  All coverage is in the Carlos DeLuna category index.