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
As the Bexar County prosecutors investigate whether an innocent man was executed in 1993, a key piece of their case involves the credibility of a key witness in the case ?- a convicted accomplice and felon who waited more than 20 years before providing an account of the crime that could exonerate Ruben Cantu.
David Garza, 15 at the time of a brutal attack on two men in a robbery-murder in San Antonio, told a homicide detective in 1985 that he saw the 17-year-old Cantu running from the scene after shots were fired, according to a police report that Garza says was falsified.
Today, Garza, along with the lone eyewitness to the murder, and an alibi witness who never testified, all say that Cantu was wrongfully executed. All three men failed to speak out before Cantu's death by injection Aug. 24, 1993.
"We know that he has credibility problems," said First Assistant District Attorney Clifford C. Herberg Jr. of Garza. "We know that he has not told you the truth ... we know that he lies about even the littlest things and he has given conflicting versions of what happened over the years."
Herberg said that Garza also gave additional statements about the crime that Herberg refused to disclose because of the ongoing investigation.
So far only the alibi witness, Eloy Gonzales, has provided a full statement for Bexar County investigators. The eyewitness, Juan Moreno, who was shot and wounded in the attack, has not been interviewed.
Garza has refused to cooperate.
Case reopened last year
Late last year, the Bexar County District Attorney reopened the old capital murder case after the Houston Chronicle published an independent investigation of the murder. As part of its investigation, the Chronicle interviewed Garza and obtained a copy of a sworn statement in which he details his involvement in the crime and attempts to clear Cantu.
In an interview this week in prison, Garza told the Chronicle that he stood by that statement, which is being published today on Chron.com with Garza's consent.
"I might be a criminal, but I'm no liar ?- I have nothing to hide," Garza said in an interview Monday at the Stiles Unit in Beaumont. "I don't have anything against the death penalty if it's somebody that did the crime. But now you're talking about someone that's innocent and that's a different story."
In his sworn statement, Garza admits for the first time that he entered the house on the night of the murder and assaulted one of the victims, though he says a different neighborhood teen carried the murder weapon and fired the fatal shots. "Although Ruben Cantu was also charged I would like to say that he was not with me that night and he was not involved in this robbery in any way," Garza said in the statement.
Garza has given repeated interviews to the Chronicle about the case.
However, Bexar County authorities say Garza has refused to provide the 2005 statement to them or to take a lie detector test. And when a Bexar County prosecutor and an investigator visited him in December, Garza refused to speak on the record.
Garza has told the Chronicle that he felt prosecutors approached him aggressively and refused to identify themselves at first.
An audio tape of the first part of the December interview shows that the Bexar County officials provided their names and titles before Garza asked them to turn off their recorder, saying he wanted to go off the record "for now."
Garza blasts DA office
On Monday, Garza said no one told him who was at the prison to see him before he was brought out of his cell for the December interview, though he acknowledged they later provided names. Garza said he remains convinced that the Bexar County District Attorney's office is too biased to conduct a fair review of the case.
''What the DA's office is doing is making attacks ?- shooting the messenger David Garza," said Keith S. Hampton, a prominent Austin defense lawyer who has volunteered to represent Garza.
"They ought to reholster their gun and think a little more carefully. There is no reason for the crime victim and the man who committed the crime to be corroborating each other."
Garza was charged in 1985 in connection with a robbery and murder in the South San Antonio neighborhood where he and Cantu both lived.
He pleaded guilty to the robbery and went to prison at 15 on a 20-year sentence. Cantu was sentenced to death and executed.
In his 2005 statement, Garza admits that he and another teen snuck into a house under construction Nov. 8, 1984, and surprised the two men inside who were sleeping on mattresses on the floor ?- Pedro Gomez, 25, and Moreno, 19, Mexican citizens who were building the house for a relative.
'Just went crazy'
According to Garza, Gomez woke up quickly and reached for a .38-caliber revolver hidden under his pillow. Then the teen with Garza "just went crazy" ?- he emptied his rifle and then picked up Gomez's gun and fired at Moreno, who barely survived to testify.
Some details Garza provided are corroborated by testimony and police reports about the case. For example, Garza says the other teen fired both the rifle and Gomez's gun, a .38-caliber. Inside the house, investigators recovered both .22-caliber bullets and cartridges, likely to have come from a .22-caliber Marlin rifle, as well as .38-caliber bullets likely from a Colt revolver, based on testimony from Richard Stengel, then firearm and tool mark examiner for the Bexar County Regional Crime Lab.
The weapons were never found.
Nearly four months after the crime, Moreno identified mug shots of Garza and Cantu. However, no physical evidence tied either man to the scene, trial records show. Garza did not testify.
Moreno told the Chronicle last year that it was not Cantu who shot him or his friend ?- but police persuaded him to implicate Cantu after showing him his photo three separate times. Attorneys who represent Moreno now say that the DA has made it difficult for him to cooperate with their investigation because they have said they may prosecute him for murder by perjury.
On March 5, 1985, Garza, unaccompanied by a lawyer or by a parent, initially denied to a homicide detective that he was involved, according to a police report. But in the same interview Garza "told me he had been there at the scene, but that he had stayed outside," a detective wrote. "He said he heard some shots, then saw Ruben (Cantu) ... come running out of the house."
In his 2005 statement, Garza admits he initially lied about being outside to protect himself. But Garza said detectives "were trying to connect Ruben Cantu to the robbery" and police fabricated the rest. "I never told police that after I heard gunshots, I saw Ruben run out of the house," he said.
Herberg said he found the attack on the credibility of the homicide detective to be unbelievable.
"To believe David Garza you have to believe that all the people who had hard-working lives in law enforcement ... are lying, and not David Garza," he said.
Another teen not charged
In his statement, Garza says another neighborhood teen was his armed accomplice and that he never named Cantu.
That person has denied his guilt to both the Chronicle and to Bexar County authorities. He is not being named by the Chronicle and has not been charged. That same man also is the only person who claims that Cantu confessed to him, according to interviews and court records.
The man also took a lie detector test at the time and recently passed another test in which he denied his involvement, Herberg said.
Herberg has refused to release records related to the lie detector tests in response to a public information request by the Chronicle because of the pending investigation.
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.
July 22, 2006, 10:58PM
Candid phone calls cast doubt on Cantu review
Investigators are heard mocking the claim of wrongful execution, but DA denies any bias
By LISE OLSEN and MARO ROBBINS
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle AND San Antonio Express-News
SAN ANTONIO - The Bexar County district attorney's investigation into a possibly wrongful execution had barely started earlier this year, but already DA investigators were scoffing at the three witnesses who contend Texas sent an innocent man named Ruben Cantu to his death.
"They're lying. They're all lying, and they know they're lying," Mike Beers, the senior DA investigator, told the retired sergeant who drove the homicide investigation against Cantu and whose actions, along with other officers in that case, are under review by the DA's office.
That was in February, before DA investigators had spoken with two of the three witnesses who say Cantu was innocent. By March, another top investigator was forecasting the outcome:
"It's going to go forward with the fact that it was justified and everything was correct, and that's the way it is," James Moore, one of the primary DA investigators on the case, told Bill Ewell, the retired sergeant, on a routinely recorded phone line March 7.
Obtained through a public-records request, these recorded conversations open a window into one of the highest-profile and politically polarizing investigations under way in Texas, a review of allegations that the state made a mistake when it executed Cantu for a 1984 robbery and murder.
Both DA investigators ridicule the case and openly mock the notion that Cantu might have been innocent. They describe the witnesses as liars and bastards; one dismisses the possibility of a future wrongful-execution lawsuit as "chicken ****."
Together, the recorded statements stand in contrast to public assurances that the Bexar County DA's Office will fully and fairly examine assertions that Cantu played no part in the 1984 robbery that left one man dead and another bleeding from nearly a dozen wounds.
A spokesman for District Attorney Susan Reed characterized the conversations as harmless "shop talk" and speculation, sprinkled with the salty language of tough cops. First Assistant District Attorney Cliff Herberg said any doubts about the case are natural, because two of the witness who vouch for Cantu are ex-convicts and liars.
Herberg said the investigators did not disclose any confidential information or violate ethical rules and would not be disciplined. Yet, he did say he regretted the remarks had been made on a publicly recorded telephone line because they could imply that his office had "prejudged the case."
"We want people to have confidence in the integrity of the investigation. This obviously does not help that," Herberg said. "But all of the people that are involved are professionals ... and they will do the job that needs to be done to the best of their ability regardless of what their personal opinions may be."
Several ethicists and lawyers asked to review the information are more skeptical.
"I do think (the DA) needs to determine whether or not the lead investigators have done a good job, based on these phone calls. Because it sounds to me that this important team has prejudged the case," said Linda Eads, an ethicist and former prosecutor who is chairwoman of the professional disciplinary rules committee for the State Bar of Texas.
Investigators Beers and Moore work under the direction of Herberg and other attorneys in the DA's office. Through Herberg, both refused to comment but stressed they had done nothing improper. Herberg quoted Moore as saying: "There is no conspiracy by us to cover up any actions by anybody." Ewell, through an attorney, also declined to comment.
At the time of the conversations, Ewell served as police chief for the North East Independent School District, which routinely records calls on its police-department phone line. Ewell, who is now retired from the school district as well as the San Antonio Police Department, is not the target of any criminal investigation, Herberg said, though the actions of officers involved in the Cantu case are under review.
'They're all lying'
In 1985, it was Ewell and his detectives who, on the third attempt, obtained the key evidence against Cantu, an eyewitness identification from the lone surviving victim of the robbery, a witness who now says police pressured him to identify Cantu.
Reed reopened the case in December after the Houston Chronicle published wrongful-execution claims made by the shooting victim, along with Cantu's convicted co-defendant and a potential alibi witness who says Cantu was in Waco stealing cars about the time of the murder.
Reed testified in June that she hadn't formed any conclusions, but months earlier, her senior investigator already had given his opinion.
"They're all lying," said Beers, the DA's senior investigator, in that February phone conversation.
"Yeah, I think so. I mean I know so," Ewell replied. "But, I mean, I hope the DA knows that."
"Oh yeah," Beers assured him. "All they're just trying to show is that ... the case was handled ethically and it was done correctly."
A month later, Moore, the head investigator in the DA's white-collar-crime section, gave Ewell information and advice.
In one conversation, Moore, who informally interviewed Cantu's co-defendant David Garza, dismissed Garza with an expletive. In another call, he predicted the investigation would prove everything was "justified" and "correct."
In an interview, Herberg, the first assistant district attorney, said that he understood Moore's dislike of Garza, a convicted felon who through the years has flip-flopped about what happened the night of the murder. But Herberg said Moore's "forward looking" and "optimistic" prediction about the case was premature and did not reflect his bosses' views.
"We're not ready to make that kind of statement," Herberg said.
Legal experts and attorneys for the witnesses have challenged the DA's objectivity in the case because in her previous job as judge, Reed denied one of Cantu's appeals and set his execution date. But no one has previously questioned the staff's conduct in the case.
Beers is a former motorcycle cop and mayoral driver who joined the SAPD in 1969, two years after Ewell. The former colleagues occasionally lunch together, according to the taped conversations.
Five days after his formal interview with the DA's office about the Cantu execution, Ewell invited Beers to lunch. Ewell told his friend he wanted "to see what you've heard."
Beers oversees all DA investigators but has played only a minor role in the Cantu review ?- retrieving some documents ?- and would know only what he read in the newspaper or heard around the office, according to Herberg. Still, when Ewell worried aloud about whether the Cantu case might later result in a wrongful-death lawsuit, Beers replied:
"That just tells me a whole lot about people like that. Y'know, just money-hungry sorry bastards."
Police not suspects
Moore had been the one who formally interviewed Ewell for the Cantu investigation Feb. 1. After that, Moore talked with Ewell on the phone several times.
On March 28, Ewell had a question for Moore.
"Am I being investigated, or what are we doing here? That's, that's my concern," Ewell said. "Does the DA's office think that I'm guilty of some wrongdoing?"
"No," Moore said. "Not that I'm aware of, no."
Later, Moore added , "There's no investigation by us ... or anybody else that I'm aware of."
What Moore meant, Herberg said in an interview, is that the police officers are not suspects because the recanting eyewitness, Juan Moreno, who has not been interviewed by the DA's office since the case was reopened, has never publicly claimed that police did anything illegal.
But the DA has said Moreno could be prosecuted for the unusual crime of murder by perjury if he lied during Cantu's trial.
Ewell began contacting friends soon after the Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News published investigations about new innocence claims in the Cantu case in late November, recordings show. He called the outgoing SAPD chief, a couple of deputy chiefs and the former judge in the Cantu trial, Roy Barrera Jr., among others.
First of many conversations
Ewell, who has refused to give an interview about his role in the Cantu case, gave his official sworn account to the DA's office Feb. 1.
The meeting introduced Ewell to Moore, who had joined the DA's office after years as an investigator with the state pharmacy board. Other calls followed.
In one conversation, Moore described his informal interview with Garza, one of the men who now claims Cantu was wrongly executed.
Garza was convicted at 15 of being Cantu's accomplice in the 1984 murder and robbery of a Mexican-born contractor. He originally pleaded not guilty, later entered a guilty plea on the robbery charge but never testified about the murder.
Last year, Garza signed a sworn statement saying Cantu was innocent and named another teen as the killer. But when the DA's team went to interview Garza, then in prison for an unrelated crime, he initially refused a lie-detector test, Moore told Ewell.
"We went down there and interviewed that little bastard," Moore, laughing, told Ewell. " ... He's very anti-death penalty."
In an interview, Herberg said he understood Moore's low opinion of Garza.
"David Garza is an admitted Mexican Mafia member. He's an admitted liar. He's an admitted participant in a capital murder. He's a three-time convicted felon," Herberg said. "What would you call him? I would not call him a Boy Scout."
Garza refused to cooperate with the DA's office when he was in prison because he claimed its investigators and prosecutors are biased.
Now out on parole, Garza gave an interview to the DA's office June 28 after having been summoned to testify in front of a grand jury.
In another March conversation, Moore called Ewell to give him a "heads-up" at Herberg's direction. A Chronicle reporter had requested the DA's file on the 1981 robbery in which Ewell and others arrested two innocent people.
Moore told Ewell that reporters were "trying to smear you ... is what it looks like, trying to ... raise a bunch of doubt and all this stuff."
"Well, how does Judge Reed feel about me?" Ewell asked.
Moore again reassured him. "She doesn't pay any attention to that."
Reed refused to be interviewed for this report through Herberg, her spokesman.
Defending the investigation
Instead, Herberg offered a nuanced defense of the investigators in a two-and-a-half-hour interview about the recordings, which the newspapers provided for his review.
Herberg said he agreed with most of what the investigators said but described their remarks as idle speculation that doesn't warrant public airing. He also insisted that the investigation's outcome has not been predetermined even as he acknowledged that some in the office may have a bias toward Cantu's guilt.
The investigators also have another predisposition: They're reluctant to believe ex-cons who, presumably, aim to discredit or abolish the death penalty, he said.
"The problem with this article is it's going to make out this point that somehow this has been prejudged. ... We're looking at everything," Herberg stressed. "But we are adults, we do have a little experience here and didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday."
He said officials have yet to speak to the most intriguing witness, Moreno. Unlike the others, Moreno isn't an ex-con. Instead, he's a shooting victim who visibly bears the scars of the attack and whose testimony put Cantu on death row.
In the recorded conversations, investigators also dismissed Moreno as a liar or speculated he'd been hoodwinked into recanting.
But Herberg insisted that no one's mind is made up.
"I hope, at least, the article conveys we understand the sensitivity of the investigation," he said. "I wish these (recordings) were not public. I wish they had not occurred. But that said, the officers can do their job. And will do their job."
Good on ya edgar...... these stories need to be seen.
Aug. 30, 2006, 9:44PM
Court won't rule on petition in Cantu case
By ELIZABETH WHITE
Associated Press
SAN ANTONIO ?- The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused today to rule whether the Bexar County district attorney should be disqualified from an investigation into whether Ruben Cantu was wrongly executed in 1993.
Keith Hampton, the attorney for convicted Cantu co-defendant David Garza, said the state's highest court for criminal cases also is "not touching" his petition to relieve Garza from being held in contempt of court for refusing to answer some questions before a grand jury this month.
"They had an opportunity here to really vindicate the law," Hampton said. "They're basically letting prosecutors violate ethical rules with impunity."
Hampton said the court refused to take up either part of his petition.
"They disposed of everything by refusing to consider everything," Hampton said.
