The StandDown Texas Project

Christian Science Monitor Q&A with James Liebman

"'The Wrong Carlos': Was an innocent man executed?" features a Q&A with principal author James Liebman, at the Christian Science Monitor.  It's by Randy Dotinga.

By design, this book is not a masterpiece of storytelling. It won't keep readers up past their bedtimes or give them chills through thought-provoking prose.

Instead, "The Wrong Carlos" carefully lays out the basic facts of a botched murder investigation and prosecution. Many more details of the case are available on the book's website, providing perhaps the most extensive accessible record of an American death penalty case.

In an interview, lead author and law professor James Liebman talks about what went wrong, how his team uncovered the truth, and what this case means for the debate over the death penalty.
 
Q: What convinced you to investigate a specific death penalty case?
 
In 2000 and 2002, we published a big study which showed there was a huge amount of adjudicated errors found in capital cases in the United States by state and federal courts. Essentially, two-thirds of all death verdicts reviewed over a quarter century had been overturned based on serious error.

Proponents say the system is working, and we don't have to worry about the ultimate error of someone being innocent. There's another interpretation. If an airline company or a car company had this level of error, nobody would want to go near them. If there's this much smoke, there's got to be fire.

So we wanted to examine a particular case to see if we could determine the risk of executing the innocent. We went from a statistical study where we were just counting outcomes to making a judgement call about which cases would be interesting to look at.

Earlier coverage of the book begins at the link.  Related posts are in the books category index.

Dotinga conducted a similar interview with Evan Mandery, earlier this month.

The Wrong Carlos Now Available as a Book

The Wrong Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution by James S. Liebman and the Columbia DeLuna Project is now available in hardcover and softcover from Columbia University Press.

Here's part of the publisher's blurb:

In 1989, Texas executed Carlos DeLuna, a poor Hispanic man with childlike intelligence, for the murder of Wanda Lopez, a convenience store clerk. His execution passed unnoticed for years until a team of Columbia Law School faculty and students almost accidentally chose to investigate his case and found that DeLuna almost certainly was innocent. They discovered that no one had cared enough about either the defendant or the victim to make sure the real perpetrator was found. Everything that could go wrong in a criminal case did. This book documents DeLuna’s conviction, which was based on a single, nighttime, cross-ethnic eyewitness identification with no corroborating forensic evidence. At his trial, DeLuna’s defense, that another man named Carlos had committed the crime, was not taken seriously. The lead prosecutor told the jury that the other Carlos, Carlos Hernandez, was a “phantom” of DeLuna’s imagination. In upholding the death penalty on appeal, both the state and federal courts concluded the same thing: Carlos Hernandez did not exist.

The evidence the Columbia team uncovered reveals that Hernandez not only existed but was well known to the police and prosecutors. He had a long history of violent crimes similar to the one for which DeLuna was executed. Families of both Carloses mistook photos of each for the other, and Hernandez’s violence continued after DeLuna was put to death. This book and its website reproduce law-enforcement, crime lab, lawyer, court, social service, media, and witness records, as well as court transcripts, photographs, radio traffic, and audio and videotaped interviews, documenting one of the most comprehensive investigations into a criminal case in U.S. history.

You'll find more at the Carlos DeLuna category index, including coverage of the 2012 announcement of The Wrong Carlos website.

The Turning Tide

Canada's National Post examines the state of capital punishment in, "Tide may be turning for U.S. capital punishment as recent votes reveal states divided on life and death issue."  It's by Joseph Brean. Canada, as is the case with every Western democracy other than the United States, does not have capital punishment.  It also contains some excellent infographics.

Public support for capital punishment remains strong, solidly 60% in both the U.S. and Canada, which abolished it in 1976, and came within two dozen House of Commons votes of reinstating it in 1987.

But there are signs this modern period of American justice might not last. In March, Maryland became the most recent of five states in six years to abolish capital punishment.

What these votes have revealed is a country formally divided, state against state, on a life and death issue.

Virginia, Ohio and national leader Texas are lined up against New York, New Mexico and Michigan, with California unsure where to stand, as it curiously registers death sentences but does not carry them out. Only nine states used it in 2012. It was 13 the year before. The national tally is 32 with, 18 without, and closing.

“I think what’s taking place is a gradual movement away from the death penalty that now has, by almost any measure, made it into an institution used by a minority of the population in a minority of the counties,” said James Liebman, professor of law at Columbia Law School in New York.

“But the counties that are using it are sticking to it, and the question really is how long the majority in the U.S. will continue to be prepared to subsidize the use of the penalty by the minority.”

About half of Americans live in a jurisdiction that does not execute. Just one county in 10 returned even a single death sentence over a given year, and only 1% did so at a rate of more than one a year, according to research by Robert Smith, assistant professor of law at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

What this reflects is the geographical pattern of the American death penalty, a lens through which its legal vulnerabilities are being targeted.

Related posts are in the abolition and capital punishment category indexes.

Two Texas Prosecutors Speak Out Against the Death Penalty

Today's Houston Chronicle publishes the OpEd, "Legislature should seriously reconsider the death penalty."  It's by Grant Jones and Sam Millsap.  Jones served as district attorney for Nueces, Kleberg and Kenedy counties; Millsap, served as district attorney for Bexar County from 1982 to 1987.  It's a must-read.

As district attorneys in the 1980s, we believed that the death penalty was the best punishment for certain crimes. We no longer believe that today. We haven't gone soft. We have come face to face with some hard truths. Both of us have been involved in the execution of men who may well have been innocent.

This year, an investigation by a law school revealed that eyewitnesses might have mistaken Carlos DeLuna, who was executed for murder in 1989, for another man, also named Carlos. The two men bore such a strong resemblance that even family members mistook photographs of one man for the other. No one will ever know for sure whether a mistake was made, but cases like DeLuna's raise serious doubts about the wisdom of continuing the death penalty.

Long after Ruben Cantu was put to death in 1993, an investigation by this newspaper persuasively argued that he was wrongfully convicted and executed. Two decades after the trial, the only eyewitness recanted his testimony and explained that he felt pressured by the police to identify Cantu as the shooter. This witness had nothing to gain by changing his position.

As long as human beings are in charge, there will be mistakes. Even people who are hardworking, and acting in good faith, make mistakes. In most criminal cases, the appeals process is there to identify and remedy errors. But the problem with the death penalty is that once it is carried out, there is no way to go back and fix a mistake.

Family members of Cameron Willingham know this fact all too well.

And:

Next month, when the legislators convene for a new session, they should seriously reconsider the death penalty. A sentence of life without parole - that is, without any possibility of release under any circumstances - keeps society safe while eliminating the chance of an irreversible mistake.

The Texas Legislature convenes January 8th.  Earlier legislative session coverage begins at the link.

Also available, more on Ruben Cantu, Carlos DeLuna, and Todd Willingham.  Related posts are in the abolition and OpEd category indexes.

A Reporter Reflects on Carlos DeLuna

"Last Call From Death Row," is Karen Boudrie Greig's article in the August issue of New Orleans Magazine.  At the time of the DeLuna trial she was a reporter for a television station in Corpus Christi.  Greig is working on a book about the case.  Here's the beginning of this must-read:

The phone call came late on a chilly December night. I didn’t expect the matter-of-fact voice on the other end; in fact, I didn’t expect the call at all. It chilled me far more than the frosty Ohio air. “This is the Texas Department of Corrections, will you accept a call from Carlos DeLuna?” asked the voice. “Yes, of course,” I said. It would be my last conversation with Carlos DeLuna, and his last phone call … ever. A little over an hour later, he
would be dead.

   When I saw him for the first time, Carlos DeLuna was just 20 years old. He was clad in an ill-fitting gray suit and seemed to almost swagger in an incongruous manner as he was brought down the tunnel between the Nueces County Jail and the courthouse in Corpus Christi, Texas. He was somewhat good-looking, with thick, wavy hair that was a little too long. He had deep, brown doe-like eyes that I assumed belied a much more sinister side of his personality. After all, he was accused of a cold-blooded killing.

I was a young reporter assigned to cover his murder trial, one that would become the summer’s sensation, mostly because the dying woman’s heart-wrenching pleas were recorded on police tapes and ultimately released to the media. At first, I didn’t think Carlos DeLuna looked like a killer. But once the prosecution laid out its case there would be little doubt in anyone’s mind that he brutally stabbed gas station clerk, Wanda Lopez, to death during a robbery just a few months earlier on Feb. 4, 1983. Trouble was, we didn’t know what we were missing.

Now, nearly 23 years after his execution, the “missing pieces” are finally emerging and painting a picture of unconscionable indifference to the truth. Columbia Law School Professor James Liebman and a team of law students have uncovered what appears to be irrefutable proof that Carlos DeLuna was innocent. In the Columbia Human Rights Law Review Vol. 43, No. 2 published on May 15, 2012, the team outlines its case in “Los Tocayos Carlos, Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution.” The compelling book-length report documents police incompetence, disregarded evidence, flawed eyewitness identification and a code of silence that left the real killer free to commit more murder and mayhem. At a time when states like Louisiana are exonerating more and more wrongly convicted persons and repeal of the death penalty is being considered by states such as California, the revelations in the case of Carlos DeLuna are providing stunning new arguments in the capital punishment debate. The report has received worldwide attention and affirmation from prestigious news organizations, including The New York Times.

And:

I watched in equal fascination and horror as the case unfolded. I couldn’t believe that such shaky evidence could condemn a man to die. At the time though, only police and prosecutors knew how shaky that evidence really was. Throughout his trial, and subsequent years on death row, Carlos DeLuna continued to proclaim his innocence. In fact, he refused a plea deal that would have saved his life because he believed the truth would eventually be revealed. But no one ever found Carlos Hernandez, or at least that’s what the world was led to believe. One year after he was sent to death row in Huntsville, Texas, I interviewed DeLuna in prison. He wouldn’t say much because his case was on appeal and he was putting his faith in the process. I asked him what he would do if he were released. He said, “I would preach the word of God, ma’am.” I was skeptical of his newfound religion, as well as his innocence. But something about Carlos DeLuna got to me.

Earlier coverage of Carlos DeLuna begins at the link.  You can read the complete Columbia Human Rights Law Review article at The Wrong Carlos.

Death Penalty Undermines Justice

That's the title of Roger Barnes' OpEd in today's San Antonio Express-News.  He's the Chair of the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio.

Death penalty advocates have long maintained there is no evidence that Texas ever executed an innocent person.

It is time for these folks to fess up. Texas has executed an innocent person.

I base this upon a recent Columbia University Human Rights Law Review report. If ever there is evidence that we got it wrong and executed an innocent person, this is it.

Wanda Lopez, a convenience store clerk in Corpus Christi, was brutally knifed to death in 1983. Carlos DeLuna was executed in 1989 for the murder. But an 18-month investigation led by Professor James Liebman concludes it was most likely another man who committed the murder.

This report (which may be accessed at www.thewrongcarlos.net) details how Texas executed the wrong man. Video clips, police records, audio interviews and notes from 100 witness interviews paint a vivid picture of the system flaws that led to DeLuna's execution.

And:

We know the system makes mistakes. Since 1987, 12 death row prisoners have been exonerated in Texas, the most recent in 2010. No one wants to see innocent people on death row. The exonerations at least set people free, albeit after grave injustices. We cannot bring Carlos DeLuna back. Execution is final.

Not surprisingly, the innocence issue is a major reason why more people are challenging the death penalty. The innocence issue is also a reason why five states have abolished the death penalty.

Earlier coverage of Carlos DeLuna and the Columbia HRLR article begins at the link.

Opinion Roundup

West Virginia's Charleston Gazette carries the editorial, "Pro-death: Ugly spectacle," today.

The death penalty degrades any society that inflicts it. States that kill people are less humane. Texas is almost the world capital of executions, and former Gov. George W. Bush boasted of his large number of termination warrants. He even mocked a woman who was put to death.

Now another Texas case from just before Bush's tenure -- evidently the erroneous execution of an innocent man -- is spotlighted in a book-length report in Columbia University's Human Rights Law Review. The account by Columbia law professor James Liebman says:

Carlos DeLuna was a young parolee with the mental level of a child. One night in 1983, DeLuna said, he saw a thug he knew stab a Corpus Christi store clerk to death with a lock-blade buck knife. As sirens approached, DeLuna ran, fearful of police.

When he was found hiding under a pickup truck a mile away, DeLuna had no blood on him, even though the murder scene was soaked with blood as the female clerk wrestled with the killer.

And:

Liebman concludes that the low-IQ DeLuna almost certainly was wrongly executed for someone else's murder. But we wonder whether Texas officials really care, in a state where prejudice against Hispanics is strong.

This fall, Californians will vote in an attempt to ban the death penalty. We certainly hope they take the humanitarian step that West Virginia took a half-century ago. We're proud that the Mountain State stopped killing prisoners.

Pro-death sentiment is held chiefly by hard-right conservative Americans. But we wonder if they, too, are beginning to lose their desire for executions.

Most modern democracies have ended the barbaric, medieval practice of putting people to death. It's a brutal remnant from the dark past. Where it remains, it's inflicted almost entirely on the poor and downgraded minorities. It doesn't belong in any advanced, educated, fair society.

Earlier coverage of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review article begins at the link; also available, earlier coverage of the SAFE California ballot initiative.  You can read the complete Columbia Human Rights Law Reviewl article at The Wrong Carlos.

Illinois attorney Spencer Aronfeld posts, "How Florida's Death Penalty Is Killing Us," at Huffington Post.  Here's the beginning:

Since 1979 Florida has executed 72 human beings. Most spent more than a decade on death row waiting to be killed. According to the Florida Department of Corrections the average death row inmate is 44 years old at the time of his execution, while they were only 30 years of age at the time of the alleged offense that led to their conviction.

Florida also executes women. Judy Bunoano was the first woman Florida executed in 1998. She died in an electric chair. Currently there are four women on death row.

After Bunonano's execution, Florida started offering lethal injections as an optional means. The executions are performed by an unnamed "private citizen" that gets paid $150.00 for each execution.

Tragically, not everyone who has been on Florida's death row was actually guilty. In fact, Florida reverses more death sentences than any other state in the country, releasing 23 death row inmates based upon post-conviction evidence of their innocence.

Now is the time that Florida must reform its criminal justice system by taking a closer look at what Florida's death penalty says about us as a civilization, as well as the 401 people who are currently on Florida's death row. Some argue and believe that having Florida's death penalty somehow discourages murder. Yet, the statistics tell another story. For instance, in 2010 the average murder rate in states with death penalties was 4.6 per 100,000 while the average murder rate for states without the death penalty was only 2.9 per 100,000.

More on Florida death penalty issues at the links.

You Can't Fix the Death Penalty

That's the title of an OpEd in today's Los Angeles Times written by Columbia Law prof James Liebman.  It's subtitled, "Carlos DeLuna's execution shows that a faster, cheaper death penalty is a dangerous idea."

Californians will vote this fall on an initiative to abolish the death penalty. Proponents of the measure say it is necessary because capital punishment is too costly. Opponents argue that costs can be cut by streamlining the system.

But whether one is for or against capital punishment, trying to make the process cheaper and quicker is a terrible — and dangerous — idea.

Recently, my coauthors and I published the results of an extensive four-year investigation into the Texas execution of Carlos DeLuna, a young Latino man with a childlike intellect who was convicted of murder. His case flew through the courts. The entire process, from arrest to lethal injection, took only six years, or half the national average for capital cases.

It now seems virtually certain, however, that DeLuna was innocent. Only a more careful — and consequently longer and more expensive — prosecution and appeals process might have prevented the tragedy.

And:

The flaws in the system that condemned DeLuna — faulty eyewitness testimony, poor legal representation and evidence withheld from the defense — continue to put innocent people at risk of execution. Cameron Willingham, David Spence, Ruben Cantu, Larry Griffin, Gary Graham and Troy Davis are among those executed despite evidence that they were not guilty. What we don't know is how many more, like Carlos DeLuna, have fallen through the cracks without ever being noticed.

DeLuna's case disproves the myth that we can save the death penalty by generating more "quick and dirty" executions. The death penalty is broken. At great effort and expense, states such as California have tried every measure to fix it, but they have failed. The only solution is to end it.

You can read the complete Columbia Human Rights Law Review article at The Wrong Carlos.

Earlier coverage of Carlos DeLuna and the Columbia HRLR article begins at the link.  Earlier coverage of the SAFE California ballot initiative is also available

Texas Gaining National Rep for Executing Innocents

That's the title of Texas Observer Editor Dave Mann's take on the Columbia HRLR report, The Wrong Carlos.

Yes, it has come to this: Credible claims of innocence in multiple cases of men executed years ago. It’s becoming a disgrace for the state. What else can we say after the recent disturbing revelations in the case of Carlos DeLuna?

DeLuna was convicted of stabbing to death 24-year-old Wanda Lopez at a Corpus Christi convenience store in 1983. His conviction was based largely on the shaky testimony of a single eyewitness. Police had the eyewitness identify DeLuna at the crime scene while DeLuna was in custody—not ideal policing practice to say the least. No physical evidence linked him to the crime. Yet the state executed DeLuna in 1989. Now it appears they had the wrong man.

In 2003, Columbia University law professor James Liebman and a group of students began an eight-year reinvestigation of DeLuna’s case. Their results were recently published in a book-length Columbia Human Rights Law Review article.

And:

Texans have sadly grown accustomed to the horrifying tales of wrongful conviction after more than two dozen DNA exonerations in Dallas County and the high-profile cases of Anthony Graves and Michael Morton. But the DeLuna case is one of the most dispiriting yet. Though the details are different, what happened to DeLuna is eerily similar to the infamous Cameron Todd Willingham case and to the Claude Jones case. (If you’re not familiar with the Jones story, which the Observer broke in November 2010, then read this story. DNA tests debunked the key evidence against Jones, who was executed in 2000, though the tests didn’t conclusively establish his actual innocence.) Then there’s the case of Ruben Cantu, a former special ed student executed in 1993 for a crime he almost certainly didn’t commit.

"Carlos DeLuna, Cameron Willingham and Rethinking the Criminal Justice System," is Dan Simon's Huffington Post essay.  He's Professor of Law and Psychology at USC's Gould School of Law.  Here's the beginning:

Carlos DeLuna and Cameron Todd Willingham probably did not commit the crimes for which they were put to death by the state of Texas. In-depth inquiries into their convictions revealed bungled investigations, poor recordkeeping, mistaken eyewitness testimony, spurious forensic testimony and misconduct by law enforcement personnel, among other problems.

Sadly, the DeLuna and Willingham convictions are hardly isolated incidents. The National Registry of Exonerations, which launched this month, lists 890 men and women who were wrongfully convicted for serious crimes and spent, on average, more than 11 years in prison before being found factually innocent. That's not the complete story. The registry does not include an additional 1,170 people who were exonerated following large-scale police scandals. The actual number of false convictions is probably far greater.

At bottom, the primary cause for false convictions is the questionable quality of the evidence habitually used in criminal prosecutions. Poor evidence can be produced even when all actors follow procedures diligently and conscientiously. The problems lie with the investigative procedures themselves. Lineups, witness interviews, and suspect interrogations rely on crude and archaic investigative methods that are both insensitive to the prospect of human error and prone to exacerbate mistakes. As a result, the evidence elicited contains an unknown mix of accurate and inaccurate evidence.

Mystifyingly, criminal investigators are not required to make a reliable record of the evidence they collect. Verdicts are thus often based on faded memories, paraphrased statements, incomplete narratives and swearing contests about what transpired in the interrogation room. Hints of error are obscured from police supervisors and prosecutors, and they are concealed from lawyers, judges and juries. The lack of a reliable record opens the door to testimony creep -- as the trial date approaches, gaps in testimony get filled, narratives congeal, and reluctant witnesses become more confident.

The Catholic Sentinel posts, "Another innocent killed?"

America is one of the few remaining countries that allows its states to use the death penalty. For a state to kill people to demonstrate that killing people is wrong is crazy.

The Vatican and the U.S. bishops have spoken out against the death penalty.
Archbishop John Vlazny has called for an end to the death penalty in this newspaper.

“Human life is a gift from God, sacred from conception to natural death ,” he wrote last year.

In his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict asserted that “society lacks foundations when, on the one hand, it asserts values such as the dignity of the person, justice and peace, but then, on the other hand, radically acts to the contrary by allowing or tolerating a variety of ways in which human life is devalued and violated, especially when it is weak or marginalized.”

Even as a deterrent to crime, the death penalty is not reliable. States with more executions do not generally have lower murder or crime rates.

The Story, an American Public Media radio broadcast, features an interview with Columbia Law prof James Liebman in, "Investigating an Execution."  It's conducted by Dick Gordon.  Audio is at the link.

Earlier coverage of Carlos DeLuna and the Columbia HRLR article begins at the link; also available, extensive coverage of the National Registry of Exonerations.  You can read the full article at The Wrong Carlos.

Robyn Blumner on 'The Wrong Carlos'

Syndicated columnist Robyn Blumner writes, "When the state kills the innocent," for the Tampa Bay Times.  It's also available as, "Innocents have been executed via the Columbus Dispatch and Tribune Media Services.  It's a must-read.

If you’re reading this in a comfortable, middle-class home, what happened to Carlos DeLuna almost certainly could never happen to you.

But everyone should care about DeLuna’s story because it lays bare America’s broken “machinery of death,” to quote former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun. After decades on the bench, Blackmun finally stopped upholding death sentences. He said the potential for error is too great in a system “fraught with arbitrariness, discrimination, caprice and mistake.”

DeLuna was a poor Hispanic nobody with a criminal record who was executed in Texas for a crime he didn’t commit. The system in Texas does not go out of its way for people like DeLuna. He was put to death in 1989 for the 1983 knife slaying of Wanda Lopez at a convenience store where she worked in Corpus Christi.

When DeLuna was arrested a short time after the murder, there wasn’t even a microscopic drop of blood on his clothes or shoes, despite a crime scene where Lopez’s blood was splattered on walls and pooled on the floor. A man’s bloody footprint at the scene was never measured by detectives to find a match.

Had police, prosecutors or defense lawyers done their job, they would have uncovered evidence pointing to another man. Carlos Hernandez was a knife-toting violent felon who told multiple witnesses that he had committed the Lopez crime. Hernandez died in prison in 1999 of cirrhosis of the liver.

And:

In 2006, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argued that because mistaken convictions have been uncovered, America’s death penalty is justified. He declared with relish that the system of procedural safeguards actually works because no innocent person, “not one,” has been wrongfully put to death. If there has been, Scalia wrote, “we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops by the abolition lobby.”

Excuse us, Justice Scalia, but here are two: Carlos DeLuna and Cameron Todd Willingham. These are two men whose stories should lead all of us to conclude, as Justice Blackmun did, that America’s death-penalty experiment has failed.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers interviews Columbia Law prof. James Liebman in a podcast.  You can listen at the link.

Earlier coverage Carlos DeLuna and the Columbia HRLR acticle is at the link.  You can read the full article at The Wrong Carlos.

Death Penalty Perils

That's the title of an editorial in today's Houston Chronicle on the case of Carlos DeLuna.

We have noted before, as have other observers, that the death penalty in Texas is all too often plagued by errors and failings, and defendants, whether guilty or innocent, have most likely been executed on the strength of faulty evidence. We concluded therefore that rather than risk executing an innocent person, we should abolish the death penalty.

Last week, we were confronted by compelling evidence that in all likelihood, the unthinkable had happened and the state of Texas had indeed executed an innocent man: Carlos DeLuna, put to death in 1989 for the stabbing death of Wanda Lopez at a Corpus Christi convenience store.

As detailed by the Chronicle's Allan Turner ("Report: Texas executed wrong man in '83 killing," Page A1, May 15,) the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, produced by Columbia University law students, devoted its spring issue to a meticulously researched, 400-page article showing that DeLuna was most probably innocent.

And:

Texas has made significant changes in the past few years, one of them being the adoption of a life without parole sentencing option in capital cases. This in itself takes away a major incentive for the death sentence. But the fact is, we can never rule out human failings and errors. We need to follow the example of a growing number of states and repeal our death penalty law. Its risks far outweigh its benefits.

PBS' NewsHour examined the DeLuna case last night in, "Carlos DeLuna Case: the Fight to Prove an Innocent Man Was Executed," featuring an interview with Columbia Law prof Jim Liebman.  There is video at the link.

RAY SUAREZ: From the very beginning, it seems like things didn't add up. Was there ever any evidence connecting Carlos DeLuna to the gas station and the killing of Wanda Lopez?

JAMES LIEBMAN: There wasn't a shred of forensic in evidence this case. Even though the crime scene was a very small, confined area that was just doused in blood, because the victim was bleeding to death from her knife wound, there wasn't a drop of blood, not even a microscopic drop of blood on Carlos DeLuna or his clothing.

We know because we found the photograph 20 years later that the person who committed the crime left a footprint in blood, very deep blood, almost like stepping in mud. But Carlos DeLuna's shoes didn't have a drop of blood on them.

Earlier coverage of the Carlos DeLuna case and the Columbia HRLR article begins at the link.  All coverage is in the Carlos DeLuna category index.

Continued Coverage - 'The Wrong Carlos'

Former Texas Governor Mark White writes, "Texas must take steps to ensure guilt in capital cases."  His OpEd appears in the Houston Chronicle.  White currently co-chairs the Constitution Project's Death Penalty Committee.

As governor of Texas during the early 1980s, I oversaw 19 executions. I was certain that the executions I oversaw involved guilty individuals, based on the best information available at the time, just as I am sure my successor was certain of guilt in the execution of Carlos DeLuna.

But now, a comprehensive investigation by Columbia University law professor James Liebman and his students suggests that Texas may well have executed the wrong Carlos.

And:

While Texas has certainly taken some steps forward since 1989 with regard to eyewitness identification reform and other innocence-related issues, the problems that plagued DeLuna's case continue to plague criminal - including capital - convictions in our state and across the nation. DeLuna's case should give us all pause as we realize that the possibility of executing an innocent individual is very real. And it should strengthen our resolve to ensure that convictions, particularly capital convictions, are accurate.

If we are going to continue to execute individuals, we must be absolutely certain of those individuals' guilt. Texas must implement best practices when it comes to criminal investigations and trials.

The eyewitness identification reform bill that the Legislature passed last year is one positive step, and I'm hopeful that jurisdictions around the state fully adopt and implement best practices in accordance with the legislation. Texas must also go beyond the steps it has already taken to examine other areas in need of reform, such as providing adequate defense counsel for the poor, reforming crime labs and revising the rules governing what evidence prosecutors must turn over to the defense.

I continue to believe some crimes are so heinous, some actions so abhorrent, that society is justified in demanding the perpetrator's life be forfeit. But I also believe if Texas is going to continue to impose the death penalty, we must take every possible precaution to ensure there is never another Carlos DeLuna.

San Antonio's alt-weekly, SA Current, has an interview with Columbia Law professor Jim Liebman, "Columbia Law School team publishes anatomy of a wrongful South Texas execution."  It's conducted by Michael Barajas.

Until the day Texas executed him in 1989, Carlos DeLuna insisted another Carlos stabbed and killed 24-year-old Wanda Lopez at a Corpus Christi gas station in February 1983. At trial, prosecutors dismissed the idea, calling the other Carlos “a phantom” that didn't exist.

More than two decades after DeLuna's execution, Columbia University law school professor James Liebman and a team of his students have gathered a trove of evidence they claim shows DeLuna was innocent of the crime, publishing the findings last week in a 400-page e-book and in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review's spring issue.

And, one of the questions and answer:

What's the impact of an investigation like this? What can it teach us when looking at capital cases today?

I think the most important thing is to make us recognize the risk we take. There is a real risk of executing the innocent in these capital cases, and that's why it's so important that this case is no different from many, many others we see. It's not an unusual case. Nobody had identified it anywhere near the time of execution as one that we ought to be worried about. There are a dime a dozen cases like this. And so right now where there's a big debate taking place across this country, when a number of states have abolished [the death penalty], with California's big referendum coming up, people should be asking the question: What do we get out of this penalty that we don't get out of, for instance, life without parole? And with what risk and at what cost? We feel this book really demonstrates the risk and the cost: the worst kind of risk out there. We feel it demonstrates that there is a very real risk even in this kind of run-of-the-mill case.

There's nothing about this case where you can say, “Oh we don't do it that way anymore,” or, “That just doesn't happen anymore.” As I say, the defense attorneys were not the strongest in the world but this is not the worst case of ineffective assistance out there. You see similar cases out there everyday across the country, Texas and elsewhere. Prosecutors did not turn over all of the evidence, but there are many cases where you see even worse examples of that. The appeals were quick, but that's not unusual. Like I said, in many ways this is a very run-of-the-mill kind of case even for today. It's the way cases go today. And so the real risk of an innocent person being executed that we found in this case is a real risk that the system continues to take as long as it's prepared to execute people.

"Texas killed the wrong Carlos," is a New York Daily News OpEd written by Shawn Crowley and Andrew Markquart.  Both participated in the Columbia HRLR project, Los Tocayos Carlos,

Other details about the shoddy investigation shocked us. The witness told police the man fleeing the station after Lopez’s murder looked like a transient, wore a disheveled sweatshirt and had a mustache. Police records show that the clean-shaven DeLuna wore a white dress shirt and dress pants that night.

According to the witness, the attacker violently wrestled with Lopez as she bled to death, casting a mist of blood spatter, streaks and pools all over the tiny clerk’s area. But forensic analysis showed that DeLuna’s body, clothes, shoes and fingernails had no blood on them.

The Corpus Christi D.A.’s office has since lost the physical evidence from the investigation. Lost along with it was the potential for the kind of DNA analysis that has exonerated nearly 300 prisoners in recent years.

All of this happened not in the 1920s or even the ’50s, but in the ’80s. And the flaws in our system that led to DeLuna’s death have not been mended. Readers can review our work and decide for themselves what happened. But we are convinced: America must come to grips with the reality of wrongful execution — and decide whether we value the death.

Earlier coverage of Carlos DeLuna and the Columbia HRLR article begins at the link.  All coverage is in the Carlos DeLuna category index.

Additional Coverage, The Wrong Carlos

Today's San Antonio Express-News carries the editorial, "DeLuna case shows flaws in system."

Many people assume that the more serious the criminal case is, the more meticulously it is investigated and prosecuted. If the state is going to send someone to prison for life or to the death chamber, it's often believed, the case against him must be rock solid.

As the increasing number of DNA exonerations demonstrates, that's not always so. According to the Innocence Project, 289 people have been exonerated of serious crimes in the United States on the basis of DNA evidence since 1989. Texas leads the nation with 44 such exonerations.

One involved Michael Blair, who served 14 years on death row before he was exonerated in 2008. The most recent involves Michael Morton, who served 25 years of a life sentence for the murder of his wife, while the actual murderer was free and went on — authorities believe — to commit a second murder.

Now an investigation by the Columbia Human Rights Law Review presents a compelling argument that the state of Texas put the wrong man to death in 1989 when it executed Carlos DeLuna for the murder of Corpus Christi convenience store clerk Wanda Lopez. The DeLuna case joins those of Cameron Willingham, Claude Jones and Ruben Cantu in offering strong evidence that deeply flawed death penalty cases get through the criminal justice system, with all its checks and balances and all its avenues of appeal.

And:

But if Texas is going to reserve the right to exact the ultimate sanction, the state's criminal justice system will have to do a better job of ensuring that those who end up on death row are actually guilty of their crimes.

Houston Chronicle columnist Patricia Kilday Hart writes, "Can't count on eyewitnesses to ID criminals."

"Why do journalists care so much about criminals?" That was the simple question posed in an email I recently found in my inbox. The author didn't tell me the grounds for her premise, but it arrived right after a column I had written about providing lawyers for poor people accused of crimes. I thought about the email this week after reading Chronicle reporter Allan Turner's story about Carlos DeLuna, who was executed by the state of Texas for a 1983 robbery-murder in Corpus Christi that he almost certainly did not commit.

And:

During the last session of the Texas Legislature, a bill by Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, was passed into law requiring the Law Enforcement Management Institute of Texas at Sam Houston State University to adopt a model policy for police lineups, to reduce the possibility of injecting error into the process.

The bill was recommended by the Timothy Cole Innocence Commission, named for a Texas Tech University student who was convicted of a rape he did not commit and died in prison of an asthma attack before he was exonerated by DNA evidence. The rape victim in the case was shown Cole's picture repeatedly until she selected it, and a police officer congratulated her for her selection.

Earlier this year, LEMIT finalized its model policy. Among the recommendations: Eyewitnesses should be shown suspects' photos one at a time, instead of all together. That, the experts say, reduces subconscious pressure to select a person who looks most like the criminal. Each suspect stands alone.

That's not how the Houston Police Department currently conducts photo lineups. According to a 2009 policy, photo spreads are shown to witnesses.

When LEMIT took testimony regarding its recommendations, Houston police Detective Mark Holloway argued there wasn't enough research to abandon photo spreads in favor of showing the photos sequentially (one-at-a-time) to witnesses.

But a prestigious think tank, the American Judicature Society, says otherwise. In a recent survey of research, the AJS concluded that "decades of laboratory research" show that the "sequential procedure reduces mistaken identifications with little or no reduction in accurate identifications."

Earlier coverage of Carlos DeLuna and the Columbia HRLR investigation begins at the link.  All coverage is in the Carlos DeLuna category index.

Continued Coverage of the National Registry of Exonerations

The National Registry of Exonerations is a great resource that's getting continued media attention.

CNN posts, "More than 2,000 wrongfully convicted people exonerated in 23 years, researchers say."  It has graphics and interactive components.

More than 2,000 people have been exonerated of serious crimes since 1989 in the United States, according to a report by college researchers who have established the first national registry of exonerations.

Researchers say their registry is the largest database of these types of cases and showcases some of the major issues with the criminal justice system, including that the leading causes of wrongful convictions are perjury, faulty witness identification and misconduct by prosecutors.

"No matter how tragic they are, even 2,000 exonerations over 23 years is a tiny number in a country with 2.3 million people in prisons and jails," says a report released by the authors. "If that were the extent of the problem we would be encouraged by these numbers. But it’s not. These cases merely point to a much larger number of tragedies that we do not know about."

Read the report (PDF) | Exonerations by state and county (PDF)

The registry itself, which looks deeply into 873 specific cases of wrongful conviction, examined cases based on court documents as well as from groups that have long documented wrongful convictions. That group of wrongfully convicted spent more than 10,000 total years in prison, according to the report, with an average of 11 years each.

"2000 and Growing: Revealing Statistics in Exoneration Study," is Ashby Jones' WSJ Law Blog post.

With increasing frequency, it seems, we get wind of DNA exonerations. Someone who’s served several years in prison gets released after DNA evidence either proves that he wasn’t at the scene of the crime — or puts someone else there in his stead.

It raises the question: Just how many exonerations (due to DNA evidence or otherwise) happen in the U.S.?

The answer, it turns out, is over 2,000 in the last 23 years, according to a study out Monday from the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University.

The study is part of a broader effort at the schools to build a registry of exonerations to chart just how often it happens, and in what contexts.  “It used to be that almost all the exonerations we knew about were murder and rape cases. We’re finally beginning to see beyond that,” said Michigan Law professor Samuel Gross, editor of the registry and an author of the report.

"National Registry Of Exonerations: More Than 2,000 People Freed After Wrongful Convictions," by Michael McLaughlin at Huffington Post.

Some tales of wrongful conviction are well known, like the case of amateur boxer Dewey Bozella.

Bozella was found guilty in 1983 for the murder of an elderly woman. New York police and prosecutors pressed second-degree murder charges propped up by the testimony of witnesses who eventually recanted their testimony. It wasn't until 2007 that Bozella's attorneys discovered major discrepancies and evidence pointing to another suspect, leading to Bozella's release in 2009.

But many stories involving tainted evidence, malingering law enforcement and mistaken eyewitness identification never become common knowledge. The cases outlined on the new National Registry of Exonerations are likely just a fraction of the wrongful imprisonment cases in the United States, researchers told The Huffington Post.

More than 2,000 inmates and ex-cons have been exonerated since 1989, according to the database that aims to track all wrongful convictions in the United States. More than 100 had been sentenced to death.

"This is a beginning," said University of Michigan Law School professor Samuel Gross, one of the database's creators. "One of my great hopes is that this will lead us to learn more about exonerations."

The database, which was developed with members of Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Conviction, focused on 873 individual cases. The researchers also identified 13 major police scandals that falsely netted 1,170 other people, although these are not included in the database because they are the results of a collective exoneration based on problems in individual agencies.

"Texas Among Top 3 States in Total Exonerations," is by Brandi Grissom and Ryan Murphy for the Texas Tribune.  The report contains a list of all Texas exonerees on the Registry.

The report's lead authors said the project is an unprecedented examination of the scope of wrongful convictions that shows they are far more prevalent than once thought. In Texas, according to the report, there have been 87 exonerations involving crimes ranging from robbery to murder. Only Illinois, with 110, and New York, with 88, had more.

“It used to be that almost all the exonerations we knew about were murder and rape cases. We’re finally beginning to see beyond that,” Michigan law professor Samuel Gross, editor of the registry and an author of the report, said in a news release. “This is a sea change.”

The report, which includes an online searchable database with details on about nearly 900 of the exonerations, details for the first time wrongful convictions in 58 cases involving drugs, taxes, white-collar and other nonviolent crimes; 102 exonerations for child sex abuse convictions; and 129 exonerations of defendants who were convicted of crimes that never happened.

The authors created a separate category for group exonerations, which includes cases of massive law enforcement corruption in Dallas and in Tulia that led to more than 40 exonerations.

The authors note, however, that their work does not encompass all of the wrongful convictions that have happened in the last two decades. Many more cases, they wrote, are probably undiscovered as the wrongfully convicted remain behind bars, die in prison or lack the money to prove their innocence.

They point to the numbers. For instance, in Dallas County, with about 2.4 million people, there have been 36 exonerations. Meanwhile, Bexar County, where the population exceeds 1.7 million, has had none.

"No matter how tragic they are, even 2,000 exonerations over 23 years is a tiny number in a country with 2.3 million people in prisons and jails. If that were the extent of the problem we would be encouraged by these numbers. But it’s not. These cases merely point to a much larger number of tragedies that we do not know about," the report states.

David A. Love writes, "How America's death penalty murders innocents," for the Guardian's Comment Is Free.  He's the executive director of Witness to Innocence.

The US criminal justice system is a broken machine that wrongfully convicts innocent people, sentencing thousands of people to prison or to death for the crimes of others, as a new study reveals. The University of Michigan law school and Northwestern University have compiled a new National Registry of Exonerations – a database of over 2,000 prisoners exonerated between 1989 and the present day, when DNA evidence has been widely used to clear the names of innocent people convicted of rape and murder. Of these, 885 have profiles developed for the registry's website, exonerationregistry.org.

The details are shocking. Death row inmates were exonerated nine times more frequently than others convicted of murder. One-fourth of those exonerated of murder had received a death sentence, while half of those who had been wrongfully convicted of rape or murder faced death or a life behind bars. Ten of the inmates went to their grave before their names were cleared.

The leading causes of wrongful convictions include perjury, flawed eyewitness identification and prosecutorial misconduct. For those who have placed unequivocal faith in the US criminal justice system and believe that all condemned prisoners are guilty of the crime of which they were convicted, the data must make for a rude awakening.

"The most important thing we know about false convictions is that they happen and on a regular basis … Most false convictions never see the light of the day," said University of Michigan law professors Samuel Gross and Michael Shaffer, who wrote the study.

"Nobody had an inkling of the serious problem of false confessions until we had this data," said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University. 

The unveiling of the exoneration registry comes days after a groundbreaking study from Columbia law school Professor James Liebman and 12 students. Published in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, the study describes how Texas executed an innocent man named Carlos DeLuna in 1989. DeLuna was put to death for the 1983 murder of Wanda Lopez, a young woman, at a gas station. Carlos Hernandez, who bragged about committing the murder and bore a striking resemblance to DeLuna, was named at trial by DeLuna's defence team as the actual perpetrator of the crime. But DeLuna's false conviction is merely the tip of the iceberg, as the database suggests.

Earlier coverage of the National Registry of Exonerations begins at the link.

Wrongful Convictions: A New Exoneration Registry Tests Stubborn Judges

That's Andrew Cohen's latest post at the Altantic looking at the impact of the National Registry of Exonerations.  It's a must-read.

Last Monday, investigators, lawyers, and writers at the Columbia Human Rights Law Review published a groundbreaking book-length piece chronicling how Texas executed an innocent man in 1989. The piece is remarkable for how deep down its authors dug to establish how and why Carlos DeLuna was executed for a crime that Carlos Hernandez almost certainly committed. Old news, proclaimed Texas prosecutors (on Twitter, no less) last week, and to a certain extent they are right. It's hard to get people focused upon a case that's a generation old. It's what has happened since DeLuna that matters.

And that's why this Monday brings such another important contribution to the debate over criminal justice in America. Early this morning, a vital new entity, the National Registry of Exonerations, published its first-ever report that picks up where the DeLuna case left off. The study results are grim: By one measure, at least 2,000 people have been falsely convicted of serious crimes in America since 1989. If Columbia Law School dug to the depths in a single case, the Registry has scanned wide the horizon in hundreds of cases to reveal both the progress made and the scope of the problem that remains.

A joint project administered by the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, the Registry profiled 873 specific cases of exoneration from 1989 through March 1, 2012. Not surprisingly, most of the men and women who were wrongfully convicted (61 percent) were black or Hispanic. As a group, the 873 exonerated defendants spent more than 10,000 years in prison -- an average of more than 11 years each. And of the 873 exonerees, nearly half, 416 to be exact, were wrongly convicted of murder. Of those, 101 were sentenced to death.

How does this happen? Why are there so many wrongful convictions when there is so much at stake for both the defendants and the victims and when we pride ourselves on a legal system designed to ensure meaningful judicial review? The reasons are legion. It matters where you are convicted, for example, and the color of your skin matters too. And it matters who your police and prosecutors and judges are. The report reveals that in a whopping 56 percent of murder-case exonerations the initial convictions was based upon "official misconduct." Carlos DeLuna, we know, was not alone.

The Registry tells us that there have been 102 exonerations of child abuse convictions, 58 exonerations in cases of non-violent crimes and 135 exonerations of defendants who actually confessed to crimes they didn't commit. It tells us more than I can list here, which is why it is so well worth reading.

Earlier coverage the Registry begins at the link.

Los Angeles Times Endorses Repeal Ballot Initiative

"Yes on the SAFE California Act: It would replace the death penalty with a sentence of life without parole, and solve a host of problems bedeviling the state law enforcement system," is the editorial in today's Los Angeles Times.

Carlos DeLuna was, in all likelihood, murdered by the state of Texas on Dec. 7, 1989.

It's hard to come to any other conclusion after reading an exhaustive analysis of his case published online by a Columbia law school professor and his students. And he may not be the only innocent death row inmate executed by that notably bloodthirsty state. Cameron Todd Willingham, a man whose conviction for setting a fire that killed his three young daughters was based on spectacularly shoddy forensics work, was injected with a death cocktail on Feb. 17, 2004.

This should never happen in California. In November, voters will have a chance to ensure that it doesn't.

Ordinarily, this page doesn't endorse ballot initiatives until shortly before an election, but the SAFE California Act isn't an ordinary ballot measure. It is the culmination of a movement that has been building for many years to replace the death penalty with a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. With one vote, Californians can solve a host of problems bedeviling its law enforcement system: the spiraling costs of incarceration and appeals for death row inmates, the legal tangles over methodology that have stalled executions in this state since 2006, and the unfairness built into a system in which convicts are more likely to be sentenced to death if their victims were white. And, more important, eliminating the death penalty would end the risk that the hands of all Californians will be stained with the blood of an innocent.

And:

If juries and courts were infallible, the death penalty might seem a reasonable punishment for society's most brutal killers. They aren't. In the absence of certainty, which is impossible to achieve, it is more ethical to impose less permanent sentences.

Earlier coverage of the California ballot initiative begins at the link; more on the Columbia HRLR article on Carlos DeLuna and the case of Todd Willingham, also available.

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.

Editorials on the DeLuna Case and Columbia Report

"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.

Two Interviews With Jim Liebman

The Texas Tribune posts, "James Liebman: The TT Interview," conducted by Brandi Grissom.  There is video at the link.

Now, more than two decades after DeLuna's execution, Columbia University law school professor James Liebman and a team of students have uncovered evidence they say proves that Carlos DeLuna was innocent, and that Carlos Hernandez not only was real but was probably the real killer. They released their findings in a book-length monograph and website published by the Columbia Human Rights Law Review on Tuesday.

"I'm convinced that no jury could possibly have convicted Carlos DeLuna beyond a reasonable doubt on the evidence here. That's absolutely clear," Liebman said in a videotaped interview with the Tribune from Columbia University in New York. Liebman discussed the lengthy in-depth investigation that the team conducted, which he said revealed that Hernandez had a long history of violent crimes, that police worked too fast, that important leads were never followed and that, in the end, even DeLuna's execution may have been botched. "Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong," he said.

And:

Carlos DeLuna protested his innocence until his death. At his execution, the Rev. Carroll Pickett, the death house chaplain, said DeLuna asked if he could call him Daddy and held the pastor's hand as long as he could.

"I fully believe that Carlos DeLuna was an innocent man, and I will always believe that," Pickett said.

At the Guardian, Ed Piklington writes, "Wrongful execution of Carlos DeLuna: highlights from our Reddit discussion."

Issue 3: How did a Columbia investigator uncover in a day what Texas police weren't able to find in six years?

Liebman: If you don't look hard, you won't find, and I fear that this is a case where the responsible people didn't look hard because they believed that they had quickly arrested the right man. As sometimes happens, minds closed before the evidence was in.

Pilkington: Yes. When I read that I nearly fell off my chair.

Issue 4: Will public opinion be affected?

Liebman: There is a vibrant debate about the death penalty in the US just now and the public is paying close attention. We wrote this article so it could provide information on that debate to the public in a very accessible way. I have faith in the facts and in the public's ability to make reasoned judgments on matters of policy over time. And it takes time. In fact, public opinion on the opinion has changed dramatically over the past 15 years in the US and it has had an impact. Juries are imposing one-third as many death sentences each year now, compared to 1999.

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

Additional Coverage of the DeLuna Report

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.

A Routine Execution in Texas

That's the title of an editorial in today's New York Times concerning the case of Carlos DeLuna.  It begins today's extensive coverage of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review (HRLR) article, Los Tocayos Carlos,

Carlos DeLuna, who was executed in 1989 by the state of Texas, was almost certainly wrongly convicted of stabbing a young woman to death with a knife in a gas station robbery in Corpus Christi. Carlos Hernandez, who died in a Texas prison while serving time for stabbing someone else, almost certainly killed the young woman and repeatedly told others that he had committed the murder.

This case is the subject of an extraordinary project at Columbia Law School, which this week released a book-length account — called “Los Tocayos Carlos,” or the namesake Carlos — detailing the errors in the investigation and prosecution of Mr. DeLuna from the moment of his arrest.

Texas has executed 482 people since it reinstated the death penalty in 1982, four times the number of any other state. A grievous injustice was very likely done in the DeLuna case. But the errors documented by Prof. James Liebman and his team are routinely found in other capital cases in Texas and other states.

In 2006, The Chicago Tribune presented evidence casting doubt on Mr. DeLuna’s conviction, based largely on Professor Liebman’s initial research. This account, based on new evidence and a 30-month inquiry, supports an even firmer conclusion that Texas executed an innocent man.

Earlier coverage of the Carlos DeLuna case and the HRLR article begins at the link.  Additional news coverage will be linked in the next post.

Andrew Cohen on the DeLuna Case

"Yes, America, We Have Executed an Innocent Man," is Andrew Cohen's post at the Atlantic.  He begins his report on Carlos DeLuna and the Columbia Human Rights Law Review article with a 2006 Supreme Court death penalty case.

Even for Justice Antonin Scalia, the crassest of the current United States Supreme Court justices, it was a particularly callous piece of writing. In 2006, in a case styled Kansas v. Marsh, the Court's five conservatives had just upheld a portion of Kansas' capital punishment law. The statute was interpreted to direct a sentence of death even if a jury found the "aggravating" and "mitigating" sentencing factors in equilibrium -- "equipoise," the Court lyrically called it. A tie, in other words, would mean death, not life.

For the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas had bent over backward to overturn a ruling by the Kansas Supreme Court that had declared the law unconstitutional. The High Court's four liberal justices had voted to uphold the Kansas ruling. Justice John Paul Stevens, the Ford appointee, chastised Thomas for reaching out so aggressively to overturn a state court on a matter of state law. And Justice David Souter, the Bush I appointee, wrote about how such "equipoise" necessarily precluded a death sentence.

Mocking the rationale of both, and unsatisfied with the scope of Justice Thomas' majority opinion, Justice Scalia wrote a concurrence he will have to live with the rest of his life. As he sought to destroy Justice Souter's argument about the doubts reasonable people have about the accuracy and reliability of America's death penalty regime, Justice Scalia described a criminal justice system unfamiliar to anyone who has ever covered a murder case, read a book about one, or watched television news.

And:

At 11 p.m Monday, the Columbia University Human Rights Review published and posted its Spring 2012 issue -- devoted entirely to a single piece of work about the life and death of two troubled and troublesome South Texas men. In explaining to their readers why an entire issue would be devoted to just one story, the editors of the Review said straightly that the "gravity of the subject matter of the Article and the possible far-reaching policy ramifications of its publication necessitated this decision."

The article is titled "Los Tocayos Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution" and it was written by James S. Liebman, Shawn Crowley, Andrew Markquart, Lauren Rosenberg, Lauren Gallo White, Lauren Rosenberg and Daniel Zharkovsky. Los Tacayos can be translated from Spanish as "namesakes" and the two men at the heart of the story were, indeed, named Carlos DeLuna and Carlos Hernandez.. On December 7, 1989, this intense piece establishes beyond any reasonable doubt, Texas executed the former for a murder the latter had committed.

The Review article is an astonishing blend of narrative journalism, legal research, and gumshoe detective work. And it ought to end all reasonable debate in this country about whether an innocent man or woman has yet been executed in America since the modern capital punishment regime was recognized by the Supreme Court in 1976. The article is also a clear and powerful retort to Justice Scalia in Kansas v. Marsh: Our capital cases don't have nearly the procedural safeguards he wants to pretend they do.

Earlier coverage of Carlos DeLuna and the HRLR article begins at the link.

The Wrong Carlos

The current issue of Columbia Human Rights Law Review (HRLR) examines the case of Carlos DeLuna, executed by Texas in 1989.  In 2006, the Chicago Tribune ran a three-part series, demonstrating that DeLuna was likely innocent of the crime for which was convicted and executed. 

The HRLR article is Los Tocayos Carlos, and it breaks new ground in investigating the case; all that went wrong, from the intital police response to a 911 call until Carlos DeLuna's execution.  The full report - contained at an interactive website - is a must read.

Here's a roundup of the news coverage this morning.  "Texas executed wrong man, report claims," by Allan Turner for the Houston Chronicle.

At 24, Wanda Lopez was savvy to the pitfalls of her crime-infested Corpus Christi neighborhood. A divorced high school dropout with a child to support, she knew well the perils of her solo night job at a nearby gas station. When a customer warned that a man with a knife lurked outside the store, she immediately telephoned police.

What happened next that February night in 1983 - a robbery, frenzied struggle and fatal stabbing - continues to resonate with questions about how well police, prosecutors and defense lawyers performed their jobs.

On Tuesday, the Columbia Human Rights Law Review will devote its spring issue to a 400-page article asserting that the state convicted the wrong man, bypassing a potential suspect who had bragged of killing Lopez.

The critique is the latest in which death penalty opponents seek to prove that Texas, with 482 executions since 1982, killed an innocent man.

And:

The journal article, "Los Tocayos Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution," grew out of a 2003 student project to examine Texas capital cases in which a single eyewitness account was key to conviction.

"This case changed my whole view," said Columbia Law professor and project sponsor James Liebman. "I had thought the problem cases were ones where you have an out-of-town defendant, a scary person who commits a really bad crime that grabs the whole community. The police are under so much pressure to find someone that something goes wrong. 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."

"Wrong man was executed in Texas, probe says," is by Chantal Valery of AFP.

He was the spitting image of the killer, had the same first name and was near the scene of the crime at the fateful hour: Carlos DeLuna paid the ultimate price and was executed in place of someone else in Texas in 1989, a report out Tuesday found.

Even "all the relatives of both Carloses mistook them," and DeLuna was sentenced to death and executed based only on eyewitness accounts despite a range of signs he was not a guilty man, said law professor James Liebman.

Liebman and five of his students at Columbia School of Law spent almost five years poring over details of a case that he says is "emblematic" of legal system failure.

DeLuna, 27, was put to death after "a very incomplete investigation. No question that the investigation is a failure," Liebman said.

The report's authors found "numerous missteps, missed clues and missed opportunities that let authorities prosecute Carlos DeLuna for the crime of murder, despite evidence not only that he did not commit the crime but that another individual, Carlos Hernandez, did," the 780-page investigation found.

The report, entitled "Los Tocayos Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution," traces the facts surrounding the February 1983 murder of Wanda Lopez, a single mother who was stabbed in the gas station where she worked in a quiet corner of the Texas coastal city of Corpus Christi.

"Everything went wrong in this case," Liebman said.

That night Lopez called police for help twice to protect her from an individual with a switchblade.

"They could have saved her, they said 'we made this arrest immediately' to overcome the embarrassment," Liebman said.

Forty minutes after the crime Carlos DeLuna was arrested not far from the gas station.

Texas News Service reports, "New Website Documents “Wrongful” Texas Execution," by Peter Malof.

A treasure trove for true-crime fans is being touted as near-proof that the state of Texas executed an innocent man. Available online starting today: police photos, court files, taped witness interviews, 911 recordings, and a novel-syle report about a Corpus Christi murder in 1983.

The website comprises the largest single public collection of information about a criminal case, according to the Columbia Law School professor and his students who posted the results of their 18-month study, published in the University's Human Rights Law Review.

Kristin Houlé, executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, predicts the report will give pause to even the most steadfast supporters of capital punishment.

"There not only is substantial evidence that the state of Texas executed the wrong person, but also that law enforcement knowingly turned a blind eye to the real perpetrator."

The website - "TheWrongCarlos.net" - portrays the arrest and conviction of Carlos DeLuna as a case of mistaken identity. He always maintained that another "Carlos" who looked strikingly similar was responsible for the convenience-store murder of single mother Wanda Lopez.

The Guardian posts, "The wrong Carlos: how Texas sent an innocent man to his death," by Ed Pilkington.

A few years ago, Antonin Scalia, one of the nine justices on the US supreme court, made a bold statement. There has not been, he said, "a single case – not one – in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred … the innocent's name would be shouted from the rooftops."

Scalia may have to eat his words. It is now clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit, and his name – Carlos DeLuna – is being shouted from the rooftops of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. The august journal has cleared its entire spring edition, doubling its normal size to 436 pages, to carry an extraordinary investigation by a Columbia law school professor and his students.

The book sets out in precise and shocking detail how an innocent man was sent to his death on 8 December 1989, courtesy of the state of Texas. Los Tocayos Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution, is based on six years of intensive detective work by Professor James Liebman and 12 students.

Starting in 2004, they meticulously chased down every possible lead in the case, interviewing more than 100 witnesses, perusing about 900 pieces of source material and poring over crime scene photographs and legal documents that, when stacked, stand over 10ft high.

What they discovered stunned even Liebman, who, as an expert in America's use of capital punishment, was well versed in its flaws. "It was a house of cards. We found that everything that could go wrong did go wrong," he says.

"Another innocent executed?" is by Rania Khalek at Salon.

Death-penalty abolitionists long believed that the execution of an innocent person would turn the public against capital punishment. But that conviction has recently been shaken. First, there was Cameron Todd Willingham, who, after his 2004 execution in Texas, was found to have been likely innocent of killing his three small daughters. Nearly a decade later, Georgia executed Troy Davis despite widespread doubts about his guilt.

A new investigative report by the Columbia Human Rights Law Review (CHRLR) reveals that Carlos DeLuna, who was executed by the state of Texas in 1989, was likely innocent as well. The full report, titled “Los Tocayos Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution,” can be viewed at CHRLR’s newly launched interactive website where readers can view all of the evidence cited in the article.

Earlier coverage is in the Carlos DeLuna category index.  Journalists have also pointed to Ruben Cantu and Todd Willingham as likely innocents executed by Texas.

Politifact on the Shami Statement

In Sunday's Austin American-Statesman, Politifact examined Farouk Shami's statement from last week's Democratic gubernatorial candidates' debate, "Farouk Shami says state of Texas has killed lots of innocent people."

At a televised debate Monday, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Farouk Shami said he opposes Texas continuing the death penalty as things stand.

“If we are 110 percent that that person deserved death, I would support it, yes,” Shami said. “Not as it currently stands, absolutely not. We have killed lots of innocent people in the state of Texas.”

His declaration prompted us to take a closer look.

The state of Texas hasn’t admitted putting even one innocent person to death.

Still, Shami’s campaign suggested the candidate’s claim was backed up by the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit clearinghouse that has written reports critical of the death penalty. Online, the center lists five individuals executed by the state of Texas from 1989 through 2004 as “possibly innocent.”

Shami spokeswoman Kelly Johnson said the list justifies Shami’s declaration that the state has put lots of innocent people to death. “Farouk believes that one innocent man put to death is too many,” Johnson said. “Therefore the five listed on the deathpenaltyinfo.org Web site constitute ‘lots.’”

Of course, the center’s description is “possibly” innocent—not “certainly.”

Steve Hall, who helms the StandDown Texas Project, a group that seeks a moratorium on executions in Texas, acknowledged: “No executed Texas death row inmate has been proved innocent beyond anyone’s doubts.”

Still, Hall told us he believes innocent people have been put to death in Texas. He singled out post-execution investigations by journalists that suggest three men -- Todd Willingham, Carlos DeLuna and Ruben Cantu -- were not guilty of the charges that led to their executions.

And:

Sam D. Millsap Jr., who had made the decision to charge Cantu with capital murder, told the Chronicle he never should have sought the death penalty in a case based on the testimony of an eyewitness who identified Cantu only after police officers showed him Cantu's photo three separate times.

“It’s so questionable. There are so many places where it could break down,” Millsap told the newspaper. “We have a system that permits people to be convicted based on evidence that could be wrong because it's mistaken or because it’s corrupt.”

It's possible, as Shami said, that Texas has put innocents to death--conceivably "lots" of them. Nationally, the death penalty information center writes, “there is no way to tell how many of the over 1,000 people executed since 1976 may also have been innocent. Courts do not generally entertain claims of innocence when the defendant is dead. Defense attorneys move on to other cases where clients' lives can still be saved.”

But without a state-approved review, perhaps, it’s a reach to say such executions have happened for a certainty.

Shami could have said it’s possible that innocent convicts have been executed or that the topic bears careful study. He asserted much more than that.

We rate his statement as False.

Earlier coverage begins with my post on Thursday.

Innocents Executed?

In Monday's Democratic Party gubernatorial debate, businessman Farouk Shami stated that Texas has executed innocent people.  (See transcript, here; news coverage, here.)  He's taken some criticism for that assertion, most notably the Dallas Morning News editorial, noted here.

It's true that no executed Texas death row inmate has been proved innocent beyond everyone's doubts.  However, three cases have been investigated by journalists and there is credible evidence that these three men were innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted and executed.

One is obviously Todd Willingham, about whom a great deal has been written lately.  The original reporting on his case was done by Steve Mills and Maurice Possley in a 2004 Chicago Tribune series on junk science.  Their December 9, 2004 report was titled,"Man executed on disproved forensics."

David Grann's September 2009 New Yorker article is noted here.  The Beyler report prepared for the Forensic Science Commission is here in Adobe .pdf format. The Innocence Project has a Todd Willingham resource page which provides a concise overview of the Willingham case with links to all relevant documents.

Ruben Cantu was executed in 1993. The original reporting on his case was done by Lise Oleson of the Houston Chronicle in November 2005.  Sam Millsap, then the Bexar County District Attorney,  authorized the capital prosecution.  Millsap has since said that he has no reason to doubt the recantation by the sole eyewitness; that the individual had more to lose by recanting than remaining silent after the fact. 

Millsap has also said of the Cantu case, “I fervently hope that there are only a few prosecutors and former prosecutors in America today who find themselves, as I do, in the position of having to admit an error in judgment that may have led to the execution of an innocent man.”  Once a staunch supporter of capital punishment, Millsap now speaks out against the death penalty.

Carlos DeLuna was executed in 1989, also likely the victim of mistaken identification.  The primary reporting on the DeLuna case was also done by Mills and Possley in a Chicago Tribune series of articles in June 2006.  Former death house chaplain Carroll Pickett has written about DeLuna in his memoir Within These Walls, and believes he was innocent.  The documentary, At the Death House Door, includes DeLuna's story.

In 2001, Texas Defender Service issued it's report, A State of Denial: Texas Justice and the Death Penalty.  The report's Chapter 9, Bitter Harvest, examined the cases of six men executed by Texas in spite of serious questions of innocence at the time of their executions: David Wayne Spence, Robert Nelson Drew, Gary Graham, Odell Barnes Jr., Richard Wayne Jones, and David Stoker.  You can look at the case summaries at the link, in Adobe .pdf format.

Gary Graham, executed in 2000, was identified by a single eyewitness.  Other crime scene eyewitnesses did not identify him, and at least one of those who saw the crime positively excluded him as being the wrong height of the killer.  Graham's court-appointed lawyer apparently never read the police report, however, and never interviewed any of the crime scene witnesses.  Graham was tried when the quality of appointed trial counsel was too often worse than a disgrace. 

In Graham's photo lineup, his was the only photo of an African-American male with short hair and no facial hair, as the suspect was described; all the other individuals in the photo lineup had bushy hair and/or facial hair.  Graham's execution came before a great deal of the recent research on problems with eyewitness identification centered around human memory and the need for proper law enforcement procedures.  From the 250 DNA exonerations (capital and non-capital) chronicled by the Innocence Project, we now know that faulty eyewitness ID is the leading cause of wrongful convictions.  Graham and his attorneys fought for meaningful review of his case for more than seven years until his June 2000 execution.
 
Since the TDS report A State of Denial, Frances Newton was executed in 2005.  Gov. Perry issued a reprieve to allow for forensics testing on evidence (the dress she wore the night her husband and children were murdered.)  At issue was whether the material detected on her dress was nitrates from gun powder residue or nitrates from fertilizer.  The dress had been improperly stored, however, and contaminated with other evidence thus making the testing issue moot.  In spite of a very bloody crime scene, she had no blood or trace of blood on her, her clothing, or shoes the evening of the murder.   Her execution came shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf coast.  While her case had attracted media attention earlier, I believe that she was another victim of Katrina.

The Fall 2004 Scripps Howard Texas Poll showed that 70% percent of Texans believed that our state has executed innocent people.  That figure increased by 13 percentage points between 2000 and 2004.  Scripps Howard shuttered the poll shortly thereafter.

Some years ago retired State District Judge Jay Burnett, who presided over death penalty cases and was responsible for the creation of  the first standards for attorneys appointed to death penalty cases in Harris County, told NBC News Dateline: "There's no question in my mind that someone has slipped through the cracks and that there has been an innocent person executed."

One fact without dispute is that 11 former inmates of Texas' death row have been exonerated according to the Death Penalty Information Center. That's slightly more than one percent of the combined population of Texas death row and those executed in Texas.

I'm not writing to defend Shami's statement.  StandDown is nonpartisan and does not endorse political candidates.  His words, inelegantly stated, may have had more truth, however, than we can know or want to admit.

Error-Prone Death Penalty System Ensnares Innocent

That's the title of an OpEd from the Sunday edition of the Houston Chronicle.  It's written by John Holdridge and Christopher Hill of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project.  LINK

Cameron Todd Willingham's unthinkable story has shocked the conscience of many Americans. The state of Texas executed Willingham in 2004 for supposedly murdering his three children by setting their house on fire. His conviction was based in substantial part on testimony by the state's arson experts about the cause of the fire. A recent report by a fire expert hired by Texas condemns the state's arson testimony as bogus and unscientific.

In other words, Willingham almost certainly was innocent — as he desperately maintained until his last dying breath.

The expert's damning report has led to an onslaught of publicity about the case. However, this publicity should not mislead Americans into thinking Willingham has been the only innocent victim of our error-prone system of capital punishment. There have almost certainly been at least nine others, and possibly many more given the flaws in our criminal justice system revealed by the recent explosion in DNA exoneration. These include Carlos DeLuna, Ruben Cantu, Gary Graham, Larry Griffin and, perhaps, Sedley Alley — names no doubt unfamiliar to most Americans.

The state of Texas executed DeLuna in 1989 for stabbing to death a clerk at a convenience store. At his trial, DeLuna's lawyers attempted to show that the murder was committed by a man named Carlos Hernandez. The lead prosecutor called Hernandez a “phantom.” Hernandez was real. A post-execution investigation by the Chicago Tribune showed that Hernandez almost certainly committed the crime, and Hernandez's family acknowledged that he boasted about getting away with the murder.

Cantu was executed by the state of Texas in 1993 for an attempted robbery-murder. His conviction was based on testimony from his co-defendant and a surviving victim of the attempted robbery. After Cantu's execution, both men recanted, and the victim disclosed that he had been coerced by police to identify Cantu. The prosecutor in Cantu's case, Sam Millsap, has since become a vocal campaigner against the death penalty.

In 2000, the state of Texas executed Graham, who changed his name while in prison to Shaka Sankofa. The evidence against him consisted of one eyewitness who, after being subjected to a suggestive photo lineup, said she saw Graham through her car windshield in a dark parking lot from 20 to 40 feet away. Other witnesses stated that Graham was not the murderer because the murderer was much shorter than he was.

And:

Willingham's case would be frightening enough if it were unique. The fact that there may be several innocent people who have been executed is abhorrent and should give any capital punishment proponent serious pause.

The execution of an innocent person is an irrevocable event that, as Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun once wrote, comes perilously close to murder. No society should tolerate it. Of that, there can be no doubt.

Earlier coverage begins here.

Death Penalty System Fatally Flawed

That's the title of an OpEd from the Saturday San Antonio Express-News by former Bexar County District Attorney Sam Millsap.  LINK

According to a report released last week by the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty — Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2008: The Year in Review — this year Texas juries condemned the fewest number of people to death in more than 30 years.

As of Dec. 10, a total of 10 people (nine men and one woman) had been sentenced to death in Texas in 2008.

Perhaps this reflects the public's growing uneasiness with the death penalty or prosecutors' recognition that the costs of the ultimate punishment — both human and financial — are too high. Or perhaps my fellow Texans have come to share my realization that a fallible system that puts people to death simply cannot be trusted.

Evidence of misplaced trust in the death penalty system was on stark display on Aug. 25, when a Collin County court dismissed all charges against death row inmate Michael Blair for the 1993 rape and murder of 7-year-old Ashley Estell.

After the results of new DNA testing failed to connect him to the crime, those involved in the case agreed that there was not enough evidence to uphold the conviction. Blair had spent 14 years on death row. Michael Blair was the fourth person exonerated from death row nationally in 2008 and the 130th overall since 1973, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

And:

We cannot sanction a death penalty system that gets it right most of the time. An honest assessment of the problems associated with the death penalty is long overdue.

I urge Texas lawmakers to consider the cases of Cameron Todd Willingham, Carlos De Luna, Michael Blair, Ernest Ray Willis and others when they reconvene in January and to recognize the ultimate fallibility of a system that no longer deserves our trust... or our support.

When it comes to human life, a system that gets it right most of the time should not exist at all.

More from Sam Millsap in this earlier post.

At the Death House Door an Oscar Contender

The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, entertainment industry journals, are reporting today that the acclaimed IFC documentary is on the short list of documentaries that will be considered for an Academy Award.  "Oscar Watch: Documentary, " is THR's report.

Of the 15 features the Academy's documentary branch members are now being asked to screen over the holiday season, approximately 10 could be described as social-issue films, with varying degrees of didactic intent. Even within that category, there's tremendous variety: "Fuel" (Greenlight Theatrical/Intention Media) a grassroots-marketed film about the biodiesel movement, has little in common with "Standard Operating Procedure," 2004 Oscar winner Errol Morris' ruminative exploration for Sony Pictures Classics of the Abu Ghraib detainee-abuse photographs. (Whatever one makes of Morris' films, they certainly don't lack for artisanship.) Neither of those bears any similarity to Zeitgeist Films' "Trouble the Water," a rip-roaring, rough-and-ready Sundance Award winner about a poor African-American couple surviving Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward.

One can further divide the issue-oriented flicks into those that seem especially geared to the moment, in the vein of a recent Oscar winner featuring a former vice president, and those that tackle documentary perennials like the death penalty (IFC's "At the Death House Door" from the "Hoop Dreams" (1994) team of Peter Gilbert and Steve James) or the Holocaust (Balcony Releasing's "Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh").

Variety looks at six of the short-listed films, including this profile of At the Death House Door.

DIRECTORS: Peter Gilbert and Steve James previously collaborated on "Hoop Dreams" and "Stevie."

SUBJECT: Texas death-row chaplain Carroll Pickett, who presided over 95 executions, questions his belief in capital punishment after ministering to Carlos De Luna, one of his charges who was put to death for a crime he almost certainly didn't commit.

FINANCING: Approximately $850,000 funded by IFC.

DISTRIB: Doc played in Los Angeles and New York in March and ran on IFC in May.

HELMER COMMENTS: "We were first approached about doing a film about Carlos De Luna ... but when we heard about Pastor Pickett's life journey, we felt that's where the true heart of the story lay," James says. "Pickett's transformation from a death-penalty supporter to being against it was a long, complicated and compelling story."

Says Gilbert, "What helped us decide to move forward was that we had extremely compelling personal stories to tell. We also felt strongly that we could expose the audience to a different view of the death penalty through the eyes of the people who truly witnessed and participated in them."

Earlier coverage of the documentary is here.

Rev. Carroll Pickett: The Evolution of a Death Penalty Opponent

That's the title of an interview with Carroll Pickett on the Dallas Morning News editorial page.  LINK

For 15 years, the Rev. Carroll Pickett was a witness to state-sanctioned death. As a prison chaplain in Hunstville, he presided over 95 executions. After each one, Mr. Pickett recorded his thoughts on tape. The documentary At the Death House Door chronicles his anguish as he eventually concludes that some of the men he led to death were innocent.    

Dallas Morning News editorial writer Colleen McCain Nelson interviewed Mr. Pickett via e-mail this week:

After each execution, you recorded a tape about what you had seen.  What purpose did that serve?    

Living alone at the time that I started executions in 1982, I came home after the first, and I had to talk. ... I decided to talk to a machine and get it all out. It helped make a traumatic experience a little more bearable.

You spent time with inmates during their final hours. Did they confess their crimes? Proclaim their innocence?    

Yes, and more. There were many who did not commit the crime, and their innocence was the basic topic for the entire day and night. These were difficult since I knew some of them were not the people who pulled the triggers. Some were victims of the law of parties. Some were fully innocent.

When did doubts about capital punishment begin to creep into your thoughts?    

Maybe it was the first [execution]. But it became very real with one of the first [executions of someone who] did not pull the trigger. ...Then, I began to visit with families of the victims who found no closure. ... It was not a deterrent to anyone except the one who was executed.

Was there a pivotal moment that changed your mind about the death penalty?    

No, it was a period of growth. But I watched a young man die who called me "Daddy." I knew that he was innocent, and another inmate in another unit bragged about doing the murder. My inmate took the fall. That was a strong factor.

Do you believe that you saw innocent men executed?    

Absolutely. If a man is killed for just being [at the scene of a crime], to me, he was innocent. And others did not commit the crimes. Others just didn't have the means, the money, or the legal system to help them.

Earlier coverage of Carroll Pickett and his appearance in the documentary, "At the Death House Door," begins with this post.

Carlos DeLuna's Sister Speaks Out

Rose Rhoton writes the OpEd, "When it comes to capital punishment, Texas is guilty of failing to protect the innocent," in today's Austin American-Statesman.

'I want to say that I hold no grudges.'  

These were the final words of my brother Carlos De Luna before he was executed by the state of Texas in 1989 for a crime he did not commit. His last words express remarkable forgiveness from an innocent man facing the ultimate miscarriage of justice. Unfortunately, in the 19 years since his execution, the numerous problems that led to his wrongful conviction have never been addressed and continue to plague the Texas capital punishment system. With executions in the state about to resume, I hope that legislators and the courts will learn lessons from my brother's story.

Carlos was convicted, sentenced to death and executed in six short years, despite overwhelming problems with the case. In 1983, convenience store clerk Wanda Lopez was stabbed to death, and Carlos became a suspect when he was found near the scene shortly after the crime took place. But the crime had all the hallmarks of a violent felon who had a history of knife attacks against women in the area. This individual had repeatedly bragged to friends and family members that he committed the crime and that his "stupid tocayo," or namesake, had taken the fall. Police and prosecutors ignored the information and refused to look into the alternate suspect who many in the community believe committed the crime.

Instead, prosecutors convicted my brother on the basis of faulty eyewitness testimony and no supporting forensic evidence. The main eyewitness told the Chicago Tribune, in the newspaper's re-investigation of the case, that he has serious doubts about Carlos' guilt. The identification was made while Carlos was in the backseat of a police car and after the police told the witness they had arrested Carlos near the scene, giving the witness a false sense of certainty that Carlos was guilty.

Unfortunately, my brother's story is not unique.

And:

By not reforming its capital punishment system, Texas will continue to recklessly gamble with a broken system that risks the execution of more innocent people and others who do not deserve death.

It is unconscionable for a broken system that cannot protect the innocent to move forward with executions. I know firsthand the tragedy that results.

Earlier coverage of Carlos DeLuna's case is here.

At the Death House Door

The highly acclaimed documentary, "At the Death House Door," premieres tonight on cable channel IFC at 9:00 pm (EDT), 8:00 pm (CDT.)  There are lots of reviews today.

In the Houston Chronicle, Eric Harrison reports, "Quiet death penalty activist goes public."

Carroll Pickett is an unlikely activist against the death penalty. The retired Presbyterian pastor is 74, soft-spoken and gentle of spirit. A native Texan, he grew up in a conservative household, the grandson of a murder victim.

He grew up believing in the death penalty. The deaths of two of his parishioners in a 1974 riot at the state prison in Huntsville did nothing to soften his disposition toward criminals. Pickett, then the pastor of a church in Huntsville, said yes when he was asked in 1979 to become chaplain at the Walls Unit, ministering to death row inmates in their final hours.

That was the beginning of what Pickett, who retired from the prison in 1995 and now lives outside Houston, calls the "process." Gradually, he came to believe the system is unfair and that innocent people have died, sometimes painfully, in "botched executions."

We get to know Pickett in At the Death House Door, a sobering documentary that airs tonight on IFC.

The Boston Globe has, "Documentary listens in 'At the Death House Door'."

The Los Angeles Times has, "'At the Death House Door' on Independent Film Channel."

The New York Daily News has, "Chaplain found grave issues on death row."

The Philadelphia Inquirer has, "Jonathan Storm: Witness to death sentences."

The Washington Post has, "The Convicted and Conflicted 'At the Death House Door'."

Variety has, "At the Death House Door."

Earlier coverage is here.  Carroll Pickett's memoir, Within These Walls, is available in the right-colum Books section.

New Documentary to Examine Carlos DeLuna Case

"At the Death House Door," is the title of a documentary currently in production.  It's a production of Kartemquin Films.  The studio is best known for it's 1994 Academy Award winning documentary "Hoop Dreams."  The Cantu documentary is being produced in association with the Chicago Tribune. 

Here's what Kartemquin says about the film.

In production for The Independent Film Channel...At the Death House Door is the story of the wrongful execution of Carlos DeLuna and the Death House Chaplain, Pastor Carroll Pickett, who spent the last day of DeLuna’s life with him. The feature documentary, currently in production, follows the remarkable career journey of Pickett, culminating in the story of DeLuna, a convict whose execution bothered Pickett more than any other. He firmly believed the man was innocent, and the film will track the investigative efforts of a team of Chicago Tribune reporters who have turned up evidence that strongly suggests he was. The documentary takes a very personal and intimate look at the death penalty in Texas, the first state to do lethal injection. Pickett was present for the first lethal injection in 1981. At the Death House Door is a Kartemquin Films Production in association with the Chicago Tribune.

WorldScreen.com reports the film will premiere on IFC in May.

IFC will premiere a lineup of new original non-fiction programming in 2008, including three documentaries: At the Death House Door, Heavy Load and Goth Cruise.

Premiering May 2008, the documentary At the Death House Door examines the death penalty in Texas, the first state to perform lethal injection. It is a Kartemquin Films Production in association with The Chicago Tribune. The documentary is directed and produced by Steve James and Peter Gilbert and executive produced by Gordon Quinn.

The Tribune's Steve Mills and Maurice Possley reported the story of how DeLuna, a likely innocent, was executed in 1989.  StandDown coverage is here.  The Tribune series is here.

The Chicago Tribune was a finalist among the nominees for the  2007 Pulitzer Prize in national reporting for its series "Did this man die ... for this man's crime?," which ran in June 2006.

Journalists have also reported on two other likely innocents executed by Texas, Ruben Cantu and Todd Willingham.

Questions Should Halt Death Penalty

That's the title of an OpEd in the San Antonio Express-News by Dave Atwood, founder of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.  LINK

During the past year, three men have risen from the grave in Texas and said they were innocent of the crime for which they were put to death: Carlos De Luna, executed in 1989; Ruben Cantu, executed in 2003; and Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in 2004.

Questions of Cantu's innocence were the result of investigative reporting by the Houston Chronicle, while questions of innocence in the De Luna and Willingham cases were the result of investigative reporting by the Chicago Tribune.

These claims of innocence are a bitter pill for Texas politicians who are strong supporters of the death penalty. They claim the Texas death penalty system works perfectly fine as opposed to Illinois, where a commission recommended 85 improvements to its criminal justice system after a number of innocent people were discovered on its death row. Because of concern with the fallibility of the Illinois system, Gov. George Ryan declared a moratorium on executions, pardoned several men and commuted to life the sentences of the remaining people on death row before he left office.

You can rest assured that such bold action has never been contemplated in Texas, which prides itself on the efficiency of its execution machinery. In fact, Texas cannot find the wherewithal to conduct a thorough investigation when a case of possible innocence is revealed. After all, such a study might conclude an innocent person has been executed and the system isn't so perfect after all.

More on DeLuna

The Dallas Morning News has an editorial today, Justice Without Doubt: "Questionable death cases call for review."  It reviews the Chicago Tribune reporting on the Carlos DeLuna case and the need for a proper state investigation. LINK

Yet, as in other recent cases, the state is impotent in the matter because it lacks an apparatus to delve into questions of fatal error. And the Nueces County district attorney's office has indicated no interest in re-examining the case. This sense of cold indifference is a disservice to Texans who care about the quality of justice in each of 368 executions carried out in their names since 1982.

The facts of the De Luna case make a powerful argument for action.

And:

The De Luna case is troubling enough taken alone, but it must be considered alongside two other capital murder convictions brought into question in recent months:

•That of Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in 2004 for the arson-slayings of his three young children in their Corsicana home. Expert testimony in his prosecution has since been discredited as based on outmoded forensic science. Local officials nevertheless maintained they got the right man.

•Ruben Cantu, executed in 1993 for the robbery-slaying of a construction worker in San Antonio based solely on eyewitness testimony. The eyewitness recanted last year, saying police leaned on him hard to finger Mr. Cantu as the killer.

Also, Houston Chronicle columnist Rick Casey looks at the DeLuna case today.  LINK

As the San Antonio District Attorney's Office continues to investigate the possibility that Texas wrongfully executed a man there in the wake of dogged investigative work by my colleague Lise Olsen, here comes the Chicago Tribune with a compelling case that the same thing may have happened in Corpus Christi.

More on Carlos DeLuna

Yesterday, the sister of Carlos DeLuna spoke at a Houston news conference and called for a state commission to be created to examine her brother's case.  The Chicago Tribune, which investigated and broke the DeLuna story - the likely innocent person executed by Texas in 1989, has coverage of the news conference here.

The Tribune series found that De Luna's case was compromised by unreliable eyewitnesses, sloppy police work and a failure by prosecutors to pursue evidence pointing to the other man, who died in prison while serving time for another crime.

"My brother was killed by the state of Texas on Dec. 7, 1989," Rose Rhoton, De Luna's sister, told a news conference. "He insisted time after time that he did not commit this crime. But nobody ever took the time to investigate."

The Washington Post also had a brief on the news conference.  LINK

HOUSTON -- Opponents of the death penalty in Texas -- joined by Rose Rhoton, the sister of Carlos De Luna, a Corpus Christi man who may have been executed for a murder he did not commit -- called on Texas officials to establish a commission to investigate allegations that innocent prisoners have been put to death in the nation's most aggressive death-penalty state.

Complete Chicago Tribune coverage of the DeLuna case is here.

Not In the Name of Justice

That's the title of an OpEd in today's Chicago Tribune by the paper's former editor and publisher examining the Carlos DeLuna case.  LINK

he reason to abolish capital punishment is not that it is immoral for a society to choose death over life. Every time we decide to do a major construction project or launch a space-shuttle program or send in troops (or allow people to drive 70 m.p.h.) we know fairly precisely how many people are likely to die as a result.

Nor is the reason that killing someone inflicts pain. That is almost beside the point, not least because we have the ability to anesthetize effectively if we have the wit to use it.

The real reason is that no government is good enough to entrust with the absolute power that capital punishment entails.

 

Carlos DeLuna Condensed

Today's Fort Worth Star-Telegram runs a condensed version of the Chicago Tribune's three-part series on Carlos DeLuna, the likely innocent executed by Texas in 1989.  LINK

More on DeLuna

Andrew Cohen's Bench Conference on WashingtonPost.com praises the Chicago Tribune series on Carlos DeLuna, the likely innocent executed by Texas in 1989.  LINK

The story of Carlos De Luna and Carlos Hernandez, as told by the two reporters, is a sadly familar one to those who follow closely the criminal justice system. The police do a shoddy job at the crime scene. Witnesses are duped into making positive identifications. The suspect acts irresponsibly. The prosecutors at trial gloss over exculpatory information and leads. The judge is a hazy figure who doesn't do much, the jury in the end doesn't get all the information it should before sending off some poor loser to death row, and the appellate judges and politicians have put up so many hurdles designed to deny defendants post-trial relief that mistakes go uncorrected for years, or perhaps, forever.

The Tribune three-part series is here.

Also, the current issue of the Austin Chronicle, our local, independent Alt-Weekly, has a brief on the DeLuna case.  LINK

The intrepid reporters at the Chicago Tribune are at it again – reporting in a three-part series this week that it appears another Texas death row inmate, Carlos De Luna, was wrongfully executed for the 1983 knife murder of Wanda Lopez at a Corpus Christi convenience store. The Trib series (which began June 25 and was written by the same team who earlier this year revealed that the state had likely executed another innocent, Cameron Todd Willingham, for an arson-murder he didn't commit) reports that prosecutors and police ignored information that another man, Carlos Hernandez – a man with a penchant for knife assaults – actually killed Lopez. De Luna (who, admittedly, had had his share of run-ins with the law, primarily for nonviolent offenses) was executed Dec. 7, 1989, even though no evidence linked him to the crime, save for identification by two witnesses, one of whom has since said he was persuaded by police that De Luna was the murderer.

New Featured Book

With the Chicago Tribune's three-part series on Carlos DeLuna, a likely innocent executed by Texas in 1989, we see a familiar name involved with the story - Carroll Pickett.

Here's an excerpt from the Tribune series:

De Luna was the 33rd Death Row inmate to whom Pickett ministered, and in the years that followed he would minister to 62 more. But this one stayed with him always: how De Luna claimed he was innocent, how he took longer to die than most inmates, how he tried to raise his head from the gurney and speak to Pickett before the lethal injection left him lifeless.

"When I saw him die," Pickett said, "part of me died too."

The experience forced him to ask a question he says he still can't answer: Do the innocent die differently than the guilty?

We've added Carroll Pickett's powerful 2002 memoir, Within These Walls: Memoirs of a Death House Chaplain, to the Books section on the right-hand column.  If you haven't read it, we highly recommend it.

Carlos DeLuna

The third and final installment of the Chicago Tribune investigation into the conviction and execution of Carlos DeLuna is here.

The Tribune's analysis of financial records from the Sigmor gas station also undercuts the state's assertion that the killing took place during a robbery, an aggravating circumstance that elevated the murder to a death penalty case. Newly examined inventory documents suggest no money was taken at all.

The prosecution argued that Hernandez was a "phantom," even though one of the prosecutors knew well of Hernandez but failed to inform De Luna's attorneys--a possible legal error that could have been a reason to overturn his conviction.

And one of Corpus Christi's senior detectives at the time of the crime now says he believes De Luna was wrongly executed. The former detective, Eddie Garza, said tipsters told him that Hernandez killed Lopez, the mother of a 6-year-old girl. Yet it appears those tips were not pursued.

The Tribune also has an editorial, "Death in Texas."  LINK

This nation has had a long and impassioned debate about the imposition of the death penalty, and that debate goes on. The Supreme Court revealed its own divisions Monday, upholding a Kansas law on capital punishment by a 5-4 vote.

Capital punishment is here and likely to be around for many years. One would hope as the debate goes on that those on either side of the divide could agree on this: As long as the government imposes the death penalty, it has an obligation to make every possible effort to protect the innocent from wrongful prosecution.

The Chicago Tribune concludes a series on Tuesday that raises new questions about whether we can have such certainty. The series lays out the possibility that Texas executed an innocent man 17 years ago.

 

Part 2 - Carlos DeLuna

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.

More on Carlos DeLuna

Associated Press' re-write of the first in the Chicago Tribune's three-part series is here.

Chicago Tribune Series Begins

The Chicago Tribune has started the series we told you about yesterday on the case of Carlos DeLuna, a likely innocent person executed by Texas in 1989.

The Tribune has a small sidebar, "About the Series."  LINK

The first in the three-article series is, "I didn't do it, but I know who did."  LINK

Arrested just blocks from the bloody crime scene, De Luna was swiftly convicted and sentenced to death--even though the parolee proclaimed his innocence and identified another man as the killer.

But 16 years after De Luna died by lethal injection, the Tribune has uncovered evidence strongly suggesting that the acquaintance he named, Carlos Hernandez, was the one who killed Lopez in 1983.

Ending years of silence, Hernandez's relatives and friends recounted how the violent felon repeatedly bragged that De Luna went to Death Row for a murder Hernandez committed.

The newspaper investigation, involving interviews with dozens of people and a review of thousands of pages of court records, also shows the case was compromised by shaky eyewitness identification, sloppy police work and a failure to thoroughly pursue Hernandez as a possible suspect.

           These revelations, which cast significant doubt over De Luna's conviction, were never heard by the jury.

Be sure to visit the Tribune site for multimedia on this story.  The series continues Monday. 

Another Innocent Executed in Texas?

The Chicago Tribune is promoting a major, three-part series scheduled to run this weekend on another likely innocent person executed by Texas.  LINK  A brief video is available for viewing at the Tribune site.

On December 7, 1989, Carlos De Luna was executed for murder.  But a Tribune investigation has uncovered evidence he was not the killer:

    Part 1  Open-and-shut case unravels.
    Part 2  Coming Monday.  Phantom or murderer?
    Part 3  Coming Tuesday.  What the judge and jury never heard.

ABC News' Nightline is also expected to report on the case in tonight's broadcast.  Check your local listings for time.  Nightline generally airs following the 11:00 pm (EDT)/10:00 pm (CDT) local news.

In 2004, a Tribune series on junk science concluded that Todd Willingham, executed earlier that year, had been convicted on the basis of discredited arson analysis.  A recent report by the Innocence Project, conducted by a team of leading arson experts, supports the Tribune story.  The Innocence Project has asked the newly created Texas Forensic Science Commission to investigate.  Original Tribune reporting on the Willingham case is here.  The Innocence Project Report on the Willingham case is here.

In November 2005, the Houston Chronicle reported on the  case of Ruben Cantu, executed in 1993.  The Chronicle reported that the person who identified Cantu said that he only did so because he believed the police wanted him to select Cantu.  Sam Millsap, the Bexar County District Attorney when Cantu was prosecuted, has said that he has no reason to doubt the recantation, and regrets that a death sentence was sought in the case. 

In recent months there has been widespread criticism of an investigation conducted by the current district attorney due to conflict of interest.  The seemingly stalled investigation has also led to calls for an independent investigation. The Chronicle reporting on the Cantu case is here.

To date, Texas has executed 366 men and women since 1982, more than 35% of all executions in America since reintroduction of the death penalty in the 1970's.  Many of those executions were carried out in spite of significant questions about the reliability of convictions and/or sentencing.  The DeLuna case will only strengthen demands for a moratorium on executions and a proper review of Texas' application of capital punishment.

In 2005, the State Bar of Texas endorsed a legislative proposal to create a state-sponsored death penalty study commission.  The legislation was sponsored in the House by State Rep. Elliott Naishtat of Austin, and in the Senate by State Senator Eliot Shapleigh of El Paso.

The Abilene Reporter-News, Austin American-Statesman, Bryan College Station Eagle, Dallas Morning News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, El Paso Times, Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express-News, Victoria Advocate and Wichita Falls Times Record News have editorially endorsed moratorium proposals and reforms.

After formal studies, both the Christian Life Commission of the Baptist General Convention of Texas and the League of Women Voters of Texas called for a moratorium and reforms. The Travis County Commissioners’ Court has also adopted a resolution calling for a moratorium on executions.

The Fall 2004 Scripps Howard Texas Poll showed that 70% of respondents believed that Texas had executed innocent people.