More Doubts about Capital Trials in Texas

The faculty of the Columbia School of Law have published a book-length study that argues the State of Texas executed an innocent man in 1989. The suspect was Carlos DeLuna, charged with a murder that seems to have been committed by another man:

A team of Columbia law students led by professor James S. Liebman started probing the DeLuna case in 2003 after surveying past Texas cases for convictions in which eyewitness identifications played an essential role. Once viewed as a key indicator of a valid conviction, eyewitness identifications are increasingly being viewed by psychologists and criminal-justice scholars as a weak link in the system. DeLuna had claimed during his defense that a “look-alike Carlos” actually committed the crime—a claim that prosecutors and reporters dismissed, and that wasn’t even seriously followed up on by his own counsel. Yet a Columbia investigator’s visit to Corpus Christi quickly turned up astonishing evidence: a woman who knew both Carloses and who had heard a story, handed down in family accounts, in which the other Carlos bragged about how he had made his double take the fall for a homicide. The story of this other Carlos, Carlos Hernandez, quickly fell into place, as the Columbia team uncovered evidence and details corroborating DeLuna’s account. Without drawing formal conclusions, the study suggests that Texas prosecuted, convicted, and executed the wrong man. The likely murderer, Carlos Hernandez, died of cirrhosis of the liver in May 1999 while he was in prison for narcotics charges.

I am already convinced that Cameron Todd Willingham was innocent, so that makes at least two innocent men executed in Texas. How many would it take to get people to rethink the system? As with so many of these cases, part of the story was criminal behavior by the prosecutors:

even as DeLuna was sent to his death by a prosecutor who derided his defense as a “phantom,” a second prosecutor sat silently by in the courtroom, knowing that there really was a Carlos Hernandez and that he matched DeLuna’s description. This second prosecutor had investigated Hernandez three years earlier for another knifing murder of a Hispanic woman. The Columbia investigation also found that prosecutors had obtained and examined Hernandez’s rap sheet—in other words, they had misled the jury about the “phantom,” making a false argument that led to DeLuna’s conviction and execution.