A man named Carlos killed a woman named Wanda Lopez. Texas executed a different man named Carlos for the crime.
The Atlantic (“Yes, America, We Have Executed an Innocent Man“):
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.
Soon to be published as a book, Los Tacayos Carlos is a seminal piece of online advocacy as well. Not only is the article itself now available on the web in its entirety (at www.thewrongcarlos.net) but so are all of its supporting materials. “The web version of the Article contains approximately 3,469 footnotes,” the Review editors tell us, which in turn “provide hyperlinks to view the cited sources,” including a great deal of the evidence relevant to the case. Now, everyone in the world who is interested can learn how bad it all can go when human beings try to administer what’s supposed to be a fair, just and accurate death penalty.
[…]
Carlos DeLuna was executed in December 1989 for murdering Wanda Lopez in a February 1983 robbery in Corpus Christi. A jury convicted him in an afternoon of deliberation and sentenced him to death shortly thereafter. No appellate courts came to his rescue. And the six years it took from crime to execution was surprisingly — suspiciously — fast; nationwide, it’s usually twice that long.
Texas convicted and executed DeLuna, all right, despite the fact that there was no blood or DNA evidence linking him to the scene of the crime. The state executed him despite the fact that the only eyewitness to the crime identified DeLuna while the suspect was sitting in the back of a police car parked in a dimly lit lot in front of the crime scene. Texas executed him despite the lack of DeLuna’s fingerprints at the crime scene and the lack of the victim’s hair and fibers on DeLuna. From a bloody scene, there was nothing.
exas convicted and executed DeLuna despite the fact that the police and prosecutors knew or should have known that Lopez’s real murderer was a man named Carlos Hernandez, a violent criminal who looked almost exactly like DeLuna. Why? Because Hernandez was known to use the sort of knife used as the murder weapon. Because he matched initial descriptions of the suspect. Because he was known to be violent toward women. Oh, and because he evidently couldn’t stop bragging about how he had murdered Lopez and gotten someone else to take the fall for him.
“… [It] is no overstatement to call it ‘common knowledge’ in 1980s Corpus Christi that Carlos Gonzalez Hernandez killed Wanda Lopez,” Liebman and Co. conclude. Yet Texas executed DeLuna despite the fact that key evidence in the case went missing both before and after trial; that DeLuna initially was appointed a lawyer without criminal law experience; and that law enforcement failed to provide the defense with exculpatory evidence. Any one of these factors might warrant a new trial. Taken together they portray appalling injustice.
[…]
DeLuna was reportedly slow as a child and tested as mildly mentally retarded as a juvenile. Later, he was in and out of trouble with the law until he was found (and was perhaps beaten) by the police on the night of the Lopez murder. There is great doubt even today that he fully understood the magnitude of the trouble he was in, even as he was nearing the end in 1989, which is why he made such a perfect patsy for Carlos Hernandez.
The ultimate villain of this awful story, Hernandez died in prison, in 1999, boasting to the end that he had killed Wanda Lopez and allowed another man to take the fall for it. The cops knew this. The prosecutors knew or should have known it. Witnesses knew it. And yet no one did anything to stop the state executioners from carrying out their job. Why no one listened to Hernandez for all those years, and why no one hears the cries of others today, is a question Justice Scalia and many others have to answer for themselves.
Presumably, authorities weren’t overly motivated by the plight of a poor, Hispanic career offender.
via Laura Seay
