Wrong man was executed in Texas, probe says

[sonias]

Yahoo News 3/15/12

Wrong man was executed in Texas, probe says

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.

It was bound to happen. We've always known all along that Texas execution chamber industry is a kill them all and let God sort them out later kind of operation. And most republicans are just fine with that - collateral damage they'd say. Legal system failure does not begin to describe the horror of Texas so called justice.

May the wrongly executed Carlos DeLuna hopefully now rest in peace.

[sonias]

1. Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?

Burnt Orange Report 5/15/12

Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?


An article published today in the Columbia University Human Rights Law Review sheds new light on the case of Carlos DeLuna, who was executed by the State of Texas in 1989. One of the most thorough investigations of a criminal case in U.S. history, Los Tocayos Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution uncovers evidence that Carlos DeLuna was likely innocent of the 1983 murder of Wanda Lopez in Corpus Christi. The article also provides compelling evidence of the identity of the real killer - Carlos Hernandez - a violent and dangerous man who was well-known to law enforcement yet was ridiculed by prosecutors as a "phantom" of DeLuna's imagination during his trial.

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.

[shockedcanadian]

2. This is very troubling to read...

I was once a strong supporter of capital punishment, but it is this fear; among other vital considerations, that has forced me to change my position on this.