TCADP

A new editorial published yesterday by the Dallas Morning News (“Carlos DeLuna death case is unnerving, “May 16, 2012) comments on the new investigation into his wrongful execution, noting that “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.”

The editors also note the fact that while a majority of Americans (61% according to the latest Gallup poll) say they support the death penalty, a strong majority also believe that an innocent person has been executed.  They ask whether the case of Carlos DeLuna might address that dichotomy.  Here’s an excerpt from the editorial:

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?

Read the full editorial.

Also read this editorial from the New York Times: “A Routine Execution in Texas,” May 15, 2012.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, May 15, 2012

CONTACT: Kristin Houlé, Executive Director
512-441-1808 (office); 512-552-5948  (cell)
khoule@tcadp.org

Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?
New article revisits haunting questions about the case of Carlos DeLuna

(Austin, TX) – A book-length 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 on December 7, 1989 for the 1983 murder of convenience store clerk Wanda Lopez in Corpus Christi – and seeks to answer haunting questions as to whether he was in fact innocent of this crime.  Reinforcing previous investigations, this groundbreaking article and accompanying website by Columbia Law School Professor James Liebman and a team of students also provides compelling evidence of the identity of the real killer, 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.

Los Tocayos Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution represents one of the most thorough depictions of a criminal investigation and its aftermath in U.S. history, cataloguing in minute detail all of the flaws and failures – from a desperate 911 call from Wanda Lopez that took minutes for the police to answer to concerns regarding the effects of the lethal injection cocktail administered to Carlos DeLuna.  Everything that could possibly go wrong in a death penalty case did so here.  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.

At the time of his trial, DeLuna claimed that Carlos Hernandez, a man who closely resembled him – and who matched the initial description of a witness who came face-to-face with the killer – had committed the murder.  Prosecutors derided his claim as a “lie” and told jurors that there was no Carlos Hernandez.  In upholding the conviction and death sentence on appeal, multiple courts said the same thing – Carlos Hernandez did not exist.  Yet evidence uncovered years after DeLuna’s execution and presented here in painstaking detail reveals not only that Carlos Hernandez existed, but was well-known to police and prosecutors at the time of trial and had a long history of violent crimes similar to the one for which DeLuna was executed. Hernandez’s violence against young Hispanic women in Corpus Christi continued after his “tocayo” (namesake or twin), Carlos DeLuna, went to death row and was executed.

“The institutions meant to protect public safety and promote justice failed utterly in this case,” said Kristin Houlé, Executive Director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.  “They not only failed to provide Carlos DeLuna with a fair chance to defend his life but they also failed the community by leaving another suspect – a dangerous man with a history of violence – free to terrorize more innocent victims.”

Now, nearly 25 years since Carlos DeLuna’s wrongful execution, Texas is steadily moving away from use of the death penalty as prosecutors and juries embrace alternatives that punish the truly guilty and protect society.  Last year, the state carried the fewest executions since 1996 and death sentences in Texas remained at a historic low level, when just eight people were sentenced to death statewide.  Overall, new death sentences in Texas have declined more than 70% since 2003 and have become isolated to a small number of jurisdictions.

Yet the flaws and failures that were starkly evident in the case of Carlos DeLuna still persist in today’s imperfect system.  Since 1973, 140 people – including 12 in Texas – have been exonerated from death rows nationwide due to evidence of their wrongful conviction.  The cases of Cameron Todd Willingham, Claude Jones, Gary Graham, and Ruben Cantu also have raised serious questions about the risk of wrongful executions in Texas.

“This article is appearing at a critical time, as concerns about the risk of wrongful conviction continue to call into question the reliability and fairness of the state’s death penalty system,” said Houlé. “Attitudes toward the death penalty are shifting as public confidence in the ultimate punishment continues to erode. TCADP urges all concerned citizens, community leaders, and elected officials to use Los Tocayos Carlos as an opportunity to confront the realities of this irreversible punishment and reconsider the wisdom, efficacy, and virtue of the death penalty as a means of achieving justice.”

Los Tocayos Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution is based on an 18-month investigation by Columbia Law School Professor James Liebman and a team of students. The article and accompanying materials can be accessed at www.thewrongcarlos.net.

The Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty is a statewide, grassroots membership organization based in Austin.  Visit www.tcadp.org for more information.

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In light of the developments in the Carlos Deluna case as highlighted on www.thewrongcarlos.net, TCADP has responded by creating a new Wrongful Execution webpage listing information on at least three known cases of probable wrongful execution:  Carlos DeLuna, Claude Jones, and Cameron Todd Willingham.

Learn more about these Texas cases and how you can get involved so their names are not forgotten.

http://tcadp.org/get-informed/wrongful-execution/

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Update as of 5:00 PM on May 14:  We just learned that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has granted a stay of execution to Steven Staley.  The court did not provide a reason for the reprieve, saying only that it had determined the execution should be halted “pending further order by this court.”

Read more from the Associated Press: http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/article/Texas-inmate-set-to-die-Wednesday-gets-reprieve-3557337.php#ixzz1usupHkhP

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Previous post:

Unless the courts intervene, on Wednesday, May 16, 2012, the State of Texas will execute Steven Staley for the 1989 murder of restaurant manager Bob Read, who was taken hostage during a robbery.  At issue is Staley’s competency to be executed, given his long-standing diagnosis of severe mental illness.

Staley was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic after he arrived on death row in 1991.  At times over the last few years, he has been forced to take anti-psychotic drugs against his will.  Staley believes that the drugs are poisoning him.  State officials argue that this forced medication is necessary in order to render him competent to be executed.

In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Ford v. Wainwright that it is unconstitutional to execute someone who does not understand the reason for, or the reality of, his or her punishment.  The Ford decision left the determination of insanity and competency for execution up to each state, however, and it has not prevented the execution of scores of offenders with severe and persistent mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

In Texas, the state legislature did not establish a statute governing the process to determine competency to be executed until 1999, and the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which considers cases from Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, has never found a death row inmate incompetent for execution.  Texas’ statute does not address the issue of forced medication, however, and some state and federal courts have allowed it.  According to Staley’s attorney, John Stickels, the U.S. Supreme Court has not addressed the question of involuntary medication for the purposes of execution.

Read coverage of the case from the Associated Press (as printed in the Houston Chronicle) and commentary from Slate.

Read an earlier blog post on Steven Staley, which includes links to more information about the death penalty and severe mental illness.

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This week, two major Texas newspapers featured op-eds calling for the abolition of the death penalty.

In the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (“‘Myth of violence’ drives capital punishment,” May 1, 2012), Reverend Bernard Kern (a new member of the TCADP Board of Directors), describes support for the death penalty as part of the “myth of redemptive violence.”    Here’s an excerpt from his op-ed:

The archaic and barbaric death penalty is still viewed by some people as a just punishment for the most heinous of crimes and as a way of curbing crime. Some even believe that their religion justifies its use. This belief rests on the foundation of what theologian and author Walter Wink calls “the myth of redemptive violence.” It is the belief that violence saves, that war brings peace and that might makes right. If God is what one turns to when all else fails, then violence certainly can function as a god.

This myth, and not Judaism or Christianity or Islam, is the dominant religion in our society today. In the case of the death penalty, it is the belief that by killing another person we are made safer. The nature of the myth is that it demands obedience. Consequently, the person who embraces this myth will tend to reject any evidence that would call it into question or prove it to be false.

Faith in the myth of redemptive violence must be seen for what it is: a false religion that must be exorcised from our hearts and minds.

Read more in the Star-Telegram.

In the San Antonio Express-News (“It’s time to abolish the death penalty,” May 3, 2012), Fred Williams cites the risk of wrongful conviction and wrongful execution, the lack of a deterrence effect, and international and national movement away from the death penalty in his call for “Texas to join with Justice Blackmun and the rest of the civilized world and do away with the bloody practice of killing people.”

Read more in the Express-News.

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