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Thread: Carlos De Luna - Texas Execution - December 7, 1989

  1. #21
    Senior Member Frequent Poster PATRICK5's Avatar
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    Report questioning execution doesn't sway lawyers

    By MICHAEL GRACZYK

    HOUSTON (AP) — The defense lawyer for a Texas inmate executed two decades ago said Wednesday he isn't convinced the state wrongly put a man to death despite a new report that again questions the case.

    Carlos DeLuna was convicted in the fatal stabbing of a Corpus Christi convenience store clerk during a robbery in 1983. His attorney, James Lawrence, said his legal team "pounced" on problems with the prosecution's evidence — shaky eyewitness accounts, no blood found on DeLuna despite a bloody crime scene — but noted that DeLuna never identified the man he claimed was the killer.

    "If you tell me they killed the wrong guy, I don't know," Lawrence said.

    A team headed by a Columbia University law professor published a 400-page report this week that contends DeLuna didn't kill the clerk, 24-year-old Wanda Jean Lopez. Citing prosecutors' reliance on a single eyewitness to the attack and claiming attorneys on both sides didn't fully look into another suspect, the report concludes that DeLuna was wrongly executed in 1989. The report supplemented a Chicago Tribune investigation that raised similar questions about DeLuna's case in 2006.

    Death penalty opponents have often focused on Texas — where 482 prisoners have been executed since 1982, more than any other state — to find evidence of a wrongful execution. Several cases have been reviewed and criticized, though top state officials have never acknowledged and courts have never ruled that an innocent person was put to death.

    The Texas Attorney General's office, which handles capital case appeals, declined comment on the report after it was posted online Tuesday by the Columbia Human Rights Law Review.

    DeLuna claimed the killer was a man named Carolos Hernandez whom he'd met in the Nueces County jail.

    The county's former prosecutor who tried DeLuna, Steve Schiwetz, said records showed DeLuna had never been in the jail at the same time as a Carlos Hernandez. He also said investigators gave defense attorneys photos of every Carlos Hernandez who had been jailed in Nueces County and showed them to DeLuna, who refused to identify any of the photos as the killer.

    "It still bothers me to this day he wouldn't," Lawrence said, noting that he's handled at least 20 capital murder cases.

    "The conclusion I come to is he's making it up, giving a phony name, hence the phantom Carlos Hernandez," Schiwetz said. "What am I supposed to do?"

    Schiwetz, who is now in private practice, believes Hernandez either didn't exist or had no connection to the case. Nothing so far, he said, has "changed my mind as to who did it."

    Tuesday's university report concluded, however, that Hernandez was an ex-convict with a long record who died in prison in 1999.

    DeLuna told police he was at a skating rink with friends, including twin sisters, at the time of the murder. But photographs and other evidence presented at trial showed the sisters were at a baby shower that night.

    Lawrence said eyewitness testimony was shaky, which was noted in the Columbia report. He also noted that DeLuna had no blood on him when he was arrested not far from the crime scene — hiding under a truck. DeLuna said he was hiding because he was on parole and feared police.

    The university report said the witness who saw the store clerk struggle with her attacker has wavered in recent years in his recollection of the incident. Schiwetz acknowledged that the witness was brought back to the scene by police and told that DeLuna had been caught hiding, which was "not good police procedure."

    But the former prosecutor said there were other witnesses who said a man with a knife matching DeLuna's description at the convenience store. The case, he said, "was tried as clean as a hound's tooth. I did not skate close to the edge like some guys do."

    Lawrence questioned the second-guessing by a law school 30 years later for his handling of the case, though he said it was good to bring up awareness.

    "We don't need the death penalty," he said.

    http://www.chron.com/news/article/Re...rs-3564112.php
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  2. #22
    Senior Member Frequent Poster PATRICK5's Avatar
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    I thought Liebman sounded familiar:

    "It is worth noting, though, that Liebman has a history of dubious studies. Some years back, he proclaimed that his study showed that capital trials had a very high rate of "serious error." That simplistic conclusion was trumpeted around the country. When you got into the details, though, you found that he counted as "serious error" cases that were tried correctly under the rules in effect at the time of trial but were later reversed when the Supreme Court changed the rules retroactively.* The problem was not unreliability of the trial courts but rather the Supreme Court's "annually improvised" jurisprudence, as Justice Scalia called it, combined with nearly unlimited retroactivity. After Teague v. Lane, AEDPA, and reduced Supreme Court tinkering on procedure, the reversal rate dropped dramatically. The point here is that just because Liebman says something does not make it true."

    http://www.crimeandconsequences.com/...-del.html#more


    *This is particularly true in Texas where they applied the law correctly and then the court changed it. This was Penry I. After complying with Penry I, the Court changed the rules again. This was Penry II.
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  3. #23
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Last Call From Death Row

    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.

    On a sweltering summer day in south Texas in 1983, Carlos DeLuna was convicted of capital murder even though there was no physical evidence linking him to the bloody crime scene, no fingerprints and no blood on his clothes. DeLuna claimed he saw an acquaintance named Carlos Hernandez commit the crime and ran because he was on parole and scared he, too, would be implicated. He was found hiding under a car nearby and brought back to the gas station where a single “white” witness identified DeLuna as the Hispanic man he briefly saw fleeing the scene. It was enough for a conviction and prosecutors convinced a jury that he should die.

    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.

    After that visit, he began to write to me. He talked about being on Death Row … only he called it Death “Roll.” It seemed to me he never had much of a chance. He was poor, Hispanic and lacking in education and paternal love. He grew up in the projects, dropped out of high school and quickly succumbed to drugs and crime. On Death Row, however, there was no access to drugs, and DeLuna took advantage of the small amenities. He obtained a GED and began taking college classes. Throughout his six-plus years on Death Row, the tone of his letters changed, and it was clear he was changing. It was a metamorphosis of sorts as DeLuna began to look at life with a clearer perspective. I began to see a real person. He wasn’t just this convicted killer, subject of a high-profile news story, but a human being to whom fate hadn’t been kind in so many ways. All the while he continued to profess his innocence. But there were few, if any, who actually believed him. Years later, DeLuna’s own attorney told me that even he didn’t believe DeLuna was innocent. While I was beginning to doubt his guilt, I had no inkling of withheld evidence. And DeLuna refused to talk about his tocayo, or namesake, Carlos Hernandez for fear of jeopardizing his appeal.

    The wheels of justice are often laborious. In DeLuna’s case, they were in overdrive. While other Death Row inmates had protracted appeals winding their way through the system, it took just six years for DeLuna’s appeals to exhaust. A death date was set for Dec. 7, 1989. Carlos wrote to ask if I would be a witness at his execution.

    How could I possibly watch him die? I said, “Please forgive me, but no.” He asked if he could call me, so I acquiesced, never dreaming the call would come. I expected a stay of execution, but the governor wasn’t buying it. On Dec. 6, 1989, after saying goodbye to his family, DeLuna was allowed one last call. It was to me.

    “I’m going to be executed,” he said plainly. “It’s over. They denied my appeals.” The enormity of what was happening gripped me like a vice. I felt paralyzed; what do you say to a man who is about to die? “Oh God,” was all I could manage to get out of my mouth. “I didn’t think it would happen, not so soon. I thought you’d get a stay.” “So did I,” he said. “This is only my second (death) date. There are lots of others who’ve had more and are still waiting here.” I was immediately sick with fear for him. “They said we should have brought up the issues before.” As I was about to ask what “issues,” he quickly moved on. “What time is it there?” I said, “10:50.” “Well, at 1 a.m. your time, that’s when the process begins,” he explained calmly.

    Words cannot describe the sense of fear and helplessness racing through my mind. What words of wisdom or comfort could I give to a man who has no hope? Then, it occurred to me – maybe he needs to confess. So I asked him straight out, “Is there anything you want to tell me … to confess, Carlos?” “They are executing an innocent man,” he said quietly. “I am so sorry Carlos, I am so sorry,” I muttered sickly. “It’s OK,” he said. “I’m going to take it, not fight.”

    I was so choked up that no words would come. With practically his dying breath he still claimed his innocence. Could everyone have been so wrong?

    What do I say? What can I do?

    But it was DeLuna who found the words to comfort me instead. “I believe in God and I know he forgives. I will go to heaven. I am at peace and I’m holding no grudges. And I am glad I got to know you in this life.”

    There was an interminable pause on both ends, until he finally broke the silence. “It’s time to go.” As the tears ran down my face, I managed to say, “God be with you, Carlos.” “Goodbye, Karen.”

    A day after his execution I received a letter from him; the next day, another.

    Dec. 4, 1989: Please remember me as a good person … I close for now and if I have to die this way, I’ll never forget you, I do believe in life after death, maybe we’ll meet up there. Take care. Love in a Special Way, Carlos DeLuna.

    Fifteen years later, I received another gut-wrenching phone call. It was a law professor at Columbia University who claimed to have uncovered evidence pointing to DeLuna’s innocence. Professor James Liebman and his team were still investigating, but what they had found so far was nothing short of shocking. They discovered never-before-released police tapes calling witness identifications into question and bloody footprints that were never analyzed. They also obtained corroborating statements from people who claimed another person bragged about committing the crime – a man who looked strikingly similar to DeLuna and even shared the same first name – a known violent criminal named Carlos Hernandez. They looked so much alike in some police mug shots that even their families got the two Carloses mixed up when shown the photos.

    During the trial, prosecutors argued that the “other” Carlos was a phantom. They claimed they had tried to find him, but he simply didn’t exist. But Hernandez was very real, and was suspected in a string of violent crimes, including the stabbing death of another woman.

    After Hernandez died in prison, those who had so feared him were finally willing to talk. Unfortunately, the physical evidence had mysteriously disappeared, making a DNA test impossible. Still, Liebman and his team were confident they had enough to prove their case … unless DeLuna had secretly revealed his guilt to someone.

    Liebman and his team learned of my lengthy correspondence with him, and they wanted me to tell them everything. I told them that through all of the interviews and letters, Carlos DeLuna never once wavered from his claims of innocence. Their conclusion: Texas most likely executed an innocent man.

    Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.” Some of us wish we could have had that elusive moment of insight some 30 years ago. If there had been one small piece of evidence slipped under my door to shed doubt on the case against DeLuna, maybe then I would have been able to ask the right questions, seek the right answers and right a terrible wrong. But it all came too late.

    In spite of that terrible wrong, and all who gave up on him, Carlos DeLuna didn’t give up. He still had hope. At first it was hope in the system. Then, it was hope in God. As DeLuna faced death for a crime he hadn’t committed, he was full of grace and peace. His last words were of forgiveness. He was a changed man. He changed my life forever, too. He once told me that I was one of the only people who was ever kind to him and treated him fairly.

    I hold on to that as solace for my guilt for not believing in Carlos DeLuna until it was too late. Somehow, though, I know he forgives me.

    The full report, “Los Tocayos Carlos, Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution,” can be found online at TheWrongCarlos.net.

    Karen Boudrie Greig is a former reporter and anchor for WVUE-TV (FOX8). She lives in Jefferson Parish where she’s the Owner of Boudrie Communications, a firm specializing in public relations. At the time of the DeLuna trial she was a reporter for a television station in Corpus Christi.

    She is working on a book about the case.

    http://www.myneworleans.com/New-Orle...rom-Death-Row/
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  4. #24
    Senior Member CnCP Addict Richard86's Avatar
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    Someone who's genuinely innocent wouldn't need to keep changing their alibi, and not need to make up a false alibi that the prosecution can tear apart. And when naming the "real killer" they'd perhaps actually identify them rather than claim it to be someone who looks strikingly similar who they're afraid of and refuse to identify them. Case in point James Hanratty, not innocent I know, but had he stuck to his claim of being in Liverpool at the time instead of switching to claiming to be in Rhyl he might have stood a chance of being acquitted (the jury did have some degree of doubt even though he'd changed his mind mid trial about where we was).

    The Deluna case getting dragged up again and again is simply internet content aggregation, repeat the same theories, already investigated and dismissed, activists then repeat those theories and pretty soon you've got a body of people saying them same thing and very little in the way of reliable documents to refute them. Having spent years in academia I've realised this happens and this is why you don't use the internet as a source for any type of serious discussion. Lazy journalists and humanities academics with political agendas (Northwestern University Centre on Wrongful Convictions is a prime example of this) by contrast don't mind this being a problem so simply recycle the content without adding anything new to the body of knowledge, thus an "legitimate" non-internet source ends up putting their name to highly dubious theories. Deluna is just one of those cases that has caught on more than others.

    Same thing happens in science, although usually they don't get recycled into pseudo-legitimate ideas, because scientists are a pretty brutal bunch when it comes to our colleagues and rivals suggesting things that are just plain wrong. Instead they get recycled round and round by their advocates until they create an alternative universe of nonsense that is impenetrable to the outside world.

  5. #25
    Weidmann1939
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    Thank you for a thoughtful post. It's telling that Mr Deluna's trial attorney said he did not think Mr Deluna was innocent. "The state had to much damn evidence" He also took pains to dismiss the Columbia law school class that took up Mr Deluna's case as a class project. Said he didn't care to be second guessed by a pack of pampered snot nosed ivy league college kids.
    Last edited by Weidmann1939; 04-18-2014 at 05:57 PM.

  6. #26
    Senior Member CnCP Addict Richard86's Avatar
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    If law undergraduates in the states are anything like science undergraduates here I wouldn't take much notice of their findings. Research projects are more about learning research methods than investigating phenomena (you only learn that when teaching them as a doctoral student though!) Plus there's political interest in this type of investigation. The left wing anti-death penalty professor is going to have his ideology tickled by the finding that an innocent person was executed, whereas investigating an innocence claim properly would not.

    I think there are maybe 60 or 70 cases where an executed person denied their guilt till the end and maybe 40 of those where there is a shred of evidence, or some alternative explanation for the prosecution evidence to support their claims. Not saying any of those people are innocent but what I think is interesting is how some of them reach the media and others with equally plausible (i.e. not plausible upon closer examination) claims don't reach the media. My feeling is that Deluna was a poor Latino executed by Texas, so his claim happily covers discrimination against the poor and minorities, and the cruelty of Texas. Plus the alleged cause of his wrongful execution covers prosecution misconduct. Overall, it's a pretty good case to show that the death penalty is flawed, though unfortunately for those who peddle the claims, he wasn't innocent.

    I think we'd all be better off if the evidence in a case was published in a reasonably prominent place, so far the only place that manages anything like that is... this website! That way genuine experts can review forensic evidence presented at the trial, and when journos lie then they can be fact checked easily.

    And something else:

    Quote Originally Posted by Heidi View Post

    Carlos De Luna (left) and Carlos Hernandez
    That's strikingly similar? Really?

  7. #27
    Weidmann1939
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    As I'm sure your well aware, the antis have the advantage of being able to cherry pick cases to fit their inevitability-of-abolition narrative (as well as ideology, world view, race and class drivel et cetera et cetera). Whereas, we the proponents of capital punishment are in the rather unenviable position of having to defend the system lock, stock and barrel, hammer and tongs, tooth and nail.

    The late William F. Buckley used to observe that the real problem with or about the left was not that the left was wrong about this that or the other thing or even the extent to which the left was wrong.The real problem with the left was that the left never admits wrong much less apologizes about having been wrong, let alone show any contrition..........the left just moves on and on and on.

  8. #28
    Senior Member Member OperaGhost84's Avatar
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    I used to believe the possibility was strong of wrongful execution because of the number of Death Row inmates that were exonerated until I realised that (one) they were Exonerated and there for, not Executed, so why are we complaining? And two, no innocent man can survive two decades of appeals. Three, there's only a double digit number of Post-Furman exonerees but over a thousand executions with another thousand on Death Row so I'd call those odds well within the margin of error. As someone somewhere said, the problem with Once in a Blue Moon cases is that some people live on the Blue Moon.

    Then I obtained the Hammer of Reality! (+2 vs Unholy, Double Damage vs Undead, Armour Piercing) A devastating weapon against the forces of evil as it smashes the lies, deceit, and hysteria of wrong doers and reveals the absurdity of their arguments. In other words, I actually looked up the people on Death Row and found out they were as guilty as there are stars in the sky.
    I am vehemently against Murder. That's why I support the Death Penalty.

  9. #29
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Plus, it's worth noting that the vast majority of those so-called "exonerations" are debatable at best. Many of the cases involved have been put forward as being "exonerations" by the vehemently anti-capital punishment Death Penalty Information Center. Ward Campbell, a deputy attorney general in California, thoroughly debunked the DPIC's exoneration list a few years ago. Unfortunately, the media generally seems to lap up whatever DPIC head Richard Dieter says as if it were undisputed fact. At any rate, Campbell's rebuttal can be found here: http://www.cjlf.org/files/CampbellEx...lation2008.pdf

  10. #30
    Senior Member CnCP Addict Richard86's Avatar
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    I've found the trial transcripts here it's indexed here. They're quite an interesting read, especially Deluna's testimony and cross examination.

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