Re: Ruben Cantu - Executed
Someone should run this by that local college choir that always goes and sings "Happy Trails" outside the prison whenever someone in Texas is executed -- especially those members who were singing for this particular execution.
Here's what could prove to be another such case of wrongful execution.
Attorneys say evidence backing Anthony Graves' alibi has surfaced
By HARVEY RICE
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
Attorneys for death row inmate Anthony Graves will argue Tuesday for a new trial that will allow evidence unearthed by the Texas Innocence Project to be presented.
Graves remains a candidate for execution despite his co-defendant's declaration of Graves' innocence moments before being executed and a federal judge's ruling that the prosecutor withheld evidence during his trial.
As Graves' attorney, Roy Greenwood, prepared to argue before a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, an affidavit by prominent Houston attorney Dick DeGuerin surfaced, showing that there may be a witness who can testify that Graves was with his family while the slayings he was convicted of were taking place.
The effort to convince the appeals court to give Graves a new trial comes amid increasing evidence that there may be more wrongful convictions in death penalty cases than law enforcement officials thought.
In the latest of a string of national cases that have raised doubts about death-penalty convictions, the lone surviving witness and a co-defendant say that Ruben Cantu was innocent of a San Antonio murder that he was executed for in 1993.
In the Graves case, DeGuerin signed an affidavit last month stating that a Brenham woman was prepared to testify at Graves' trial that she was speaking with Graves on the phone about the time of the murders.
"He was not there," DeGuerin said in an interview Friday.
DeGuerin was retained by a local businessman to challenge the validity of the charges against Graves, but other attorneys represented Graves during the trial, he said.
DeGuerin said he spoke with Kay Vest, a dormitory supervisor at Blinn College in Brenham. Vest denied speaking with DeGuerin.
"I cannot believe that Dick DeGuerin, with his reputation, would say something like that," Vest said in a telephone interview. "That is not true."
DeGuerin signed the affidavit at the request of journalism students from the University of St. Thomas in Houston, who are part of the University of Houston-based Texas Innocence Network.
Trying for years
Law and journalism students at universities belonging to the network analyze hundreds of innocence claims every year, but investigate only those that meet rigorous standards of evidence. Those making innocence claims are warned that evidence uncovered by students could be used against them.
Journalism professor Nicole Casarez, adviser to the St. Thomas students, said they have been trying for the last three years to get a statement from Vest. Student Robin Hunter, 20, said she and student Andrew Lubetkin tried last week to present Vest with a copy of DeGuerin's affidavit, but Vest threatened to call the police and slammed the door.
Casarez said that if DeGuerin's affidavit is correct, Vest could support Graves' alibi that he was home with his girlfriend, brother and sister the night of the slayings.
The students have located other witnesses and evidence, such as a copy of grand jury testimony never made available to the defense in which the wife of Graves' co-defendant says her husband framed Graves.
Based on testimony
Graves and Robert Earl Carter were convicted and sentenced to death in separate trials for the Aug. 18, 1992, slaying of Bobbie Davis, 45; her 16-year-old daughter, Nicole; and four grandchildren ages 4 to 9 in Somerville. They were shot, stabbed and beaten before their house was torched.
Carter declared Graves innocent moments before he was executed May 31, 2000. "Anthony Graves had nothing to do with it," Carter said. "I lied on him in court."
Carter had also insisted on Graves' innocence in an deposition before his execution. Greenwood said Carter wrote him at least 11 letters in an effort to clear Graves.
Greenwood said he was unaware of any other case in which the "primary witness, the primary killer" recanted.
The prosecution's case was built almost entirely on Carter's testimony.
Charles Sebesta, district attorney for Washington and Burleson counties during Graves' trial, said in a television interview in 2000 that Carter had told him before the trial that Graves' was innocent.
The case ended up in Galveston last year before U.S. Magistrate Judge John Froeschner, who found that Sebesta was guilty of prosecutorial misconduct for failing to disclose Carter's statement to Graves' defense attorneys.
Try for reversal
Nevertheless, Froeschner said a jury would still have found him guilty based on the evidence presented and recommended against granting a new trial. U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent adopted Froeschner's recommendation.
In a rebuttal filed with the court, Greenwood said it was improper for Froeschner to speculate on how the jury might have ruled.
Greenwood will try Tuesday to convince the circuit judges to reverse Kent.
The rules won't permit Greenwood to use any evidence that journalism students have discovered over the last three years, enough to convince them of Graves' innocence.
"We do look at these cases objectively," Casarez said. "But there comes a certain point that the evidence we've collected and seen points to nothing but his innocence
July 8, 2006, 7:45PM
Was Corpus man wrongly executed?
By RICK CASEY
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle
As the San Antonio District Attorney's Office continues to investigate the possibility that Texas wrongfully executed a man there in the wake of dogged investigative work by my colleague Lise Olsen, here comes the Chicago Tribune with a compelling case that the same thing may have happened in Corpus Christi.
In February 1983, convenience-store clerk Wanda Lopez, 24, was stabbed to death. A young parolee, Carlos De Luna, was nabbed nearby about 40 minutes later, hiding under a pickup, shirtless and shoeless.
Police took him immediately back to the station, where an eyewitness who was walking into the store as the killer left identified De Luna as the man who told him, "Don't mess with me. I've got a gun."
The 'phantom' who wasn't
Another eyewitness, who saw the killer from farther away, would also identify De Luna.
De Luna told the police that night that he didn't kill the woman, but he knew who did. He would later name that man as Carlos Hernandez.
At trial, lead prosecutor Steve Schiwetz would ridicule De Luna's claim, describing Hernandez as a "phantom" in his closing argument.
The jury convicted De Luna and sentenced him to death. He was executed in 1989.
After interviewing dozens of people and examining thousands of pages of documents, the Tribune in the past two weeks published a series of articles that strongly suggest De Luna was telling the truth.
An 'X' on her back
Here are some of the facts the Tribune established:
Hernandez was not a "phantom." What's more, the prosecutor sitting next to Schiwetz knew not only that Hernandez existed but that he was a suspect in an earlier killing involving a knife.
That prosecutor, Ken Botary, did not inform Schiwetz, allowing him to mislead the jury.
Botary told the Tribune, "I knew Carlos Hernandez was a dangerous man" and admitted he should have told Schiwetz. He said he may not have made the connection. Schiwetz said if he had known, he would have alerted the defense (as the law requires) and would not have called Hernandez a "phantom."
Botary had been the prosecutor three years earlier in the slaying of a woman who had been strangled, with an "X" carved on her back.
Botary lost that case when the defense attorneys for another man convinced the jury that Hernandez may have committed the crime. (Hernandez would be later indicted in the killing, but the charges were dropped because the police had lost key evidence.)
Hernandez and De Luna hung out together some. Hernandez had a very violent past and had a special fondness for knives.
Although the crime scene was very bloody, none of De Luna's clothes, including his shirt and shoes found by police, tested positive for blood. What's more, the witness who passed the killer said he was wearing a gray or flannel shirt. De Luna's was a white shirt.
The Tribune interviewed five people separately, relatives, friends and acquaintances of Hernandez, who said he bragged about killing the clerk. Two described him as saying, "My stupid tocayo took the blame for it." (Tocayo is Spanish for "namesake," a reference to sharing the name Carlos.)
One said he also bragged of killing the woman whose back was carved with an "X."
Some said they were afraid to come forward, others that they were waiting to be asked or wanted to forget the matter.
A police detective at the time, Eddie Garza, said he received tips after the crime that Hernandez had done it. He said he passed the information on to detectives working the case. They told the Tribune they never received the tips.
Garza said he knew both men and that he didn't think De Luna "had it in him to do" that crime, but Hernandez "was a ruthless criminal. He had a bad heart. I believe he was a killer."
De Luna's court-appointed lawyer, handling his first capital defense, told prosecutors about Hernandez but didn't investigate the matter himself.
The key eyewitness, a car salesman named Kevan Baker, told the Tribune he was uncertain of the identification.
"I wasn't all that sure, but him being Hispanic and all. ... I said, 'Yeah, I think it is him.' The cops told me they found him hiding under a truck. That led me to believe this is probably the guy."
Hernandez and De Luna could easily be mistaken for each other.
Hernandez would commit other crimes involving knives. He was sentenced to 10 years for slicing a friend from her navel to her sternum. He was paroled after two years. He was imprisoned again in 1996 after assaulting a man. He was carrying two knives at the time.
He died in prison in 1999 of cirrhosis.
The men who prosecuted De Luna dispute none of the above facts. They still think they convicted the right man.
Good on ya edgar...... these stories need to be seen.
