"Carlos DeLuna death case is unnerving," is the editorial in today's Dallas Morning News.
A bizarre reality is imbedded in the public’s attitudes toward the death penalty: Most Americans support it, yet most also allow for the possibility that innocent people can or have been executed.
This suggests one of two things. Either the nation is callous to the idea of fatal error, which we pray is not the truth, or there’s never been a case that has sufficiently aroused the public by putting a face on an innocent victim of a state death chamber.
Could that have changed this week?
The execution of Carlos DeLuna took place 22 years and five months ago, but his path from the streets of Corpus Christi to death row has been freshly examined by a major law school project at Columbia University (reprising work, in greater depth, done by the Chicago Tribune in 2006). The findings should nauseate those who trust that only the greatest care, the most professional police work, the most rigorous jury and appellate review take place before someone is strapped to the gurney and allowed one last say.
And:
We might tell ourselves that today’s technology-savvy public would demand a higher level of proof, that no one would look back in wonder about a current death verdict.
But today’s public also admits that they believe somewhere, something is likely to break down in the system. This newspaper opposes the death penalty for that very reason.
"Another man wrongly executed," is the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial.
With nearly 300 people across the nation exonerated after being sentenced to death, the risk of executing an innocent person is a reality in the 33 states, including Pennsylvania, where capital punishment remains legal.
That risk alone should be enough to persuade responsible elected officials to scrap the death penalty — as Connecticut did in April, following the lead of Illinois, New Mexico, and New Jersey.
There can be no more compelling reason for taking that step than evidence that the wrong person has been executed for a crime.
And that’s exactly what Columbia University law professor James Liebman and five of his students provided this week with their book-length exploration of the 1983 murder for which a Texan, Carlos DeLuna, was put to death in 1989.
The Columbia Human Rights Law Review (HRLR) article is Los Tocayos Carlos,
More news coverage of the report will be linked in the next post. Earlier coverage of Carlos DeLuna and the HRLR article begins at the link. All coverage is in the Carlos DeLuna category index.
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