Texas executed wrong man

The Houston Chronicle reported Tuesday that Ruben Cantu was wrongfully executed in 1993 for the murder of Pedro Gomez. A prosecutor, the jury forewoman, an alibi witness and even a victim told the Chronicle that Cantu was the wrong man.

Miriam Ward, forewoman of the jury that sent Cantu to his fate, said the entire process failed.

"We did the best we could with the information we had, but with a little extra work, a little extra effort, maybe we'd have gotten the right information," she told the newspaper. "The bottom line is an innocent person was put to death for it. We all have our finger in that." [Yahoo]

Cantu was convicted based on the testimony of a single eye-witness who twice failed to identify him and who was later pressured by police into fingering him on the third try. Subsequently, Cantu's friend David Garza confessed to committing the robbery that culminated in Gomez' murder. Cantu wasn't even there, he said in a sworn statement obtained by the Chronicle.

[Hat tip to Grits for Breakfast.]

Comments

[togolosh]

Tough on crime = brutal towards accused criminals.

The people who support the system that produces this kind of thing simply cannot imagine themselves falsely accused of a crime.

[John]

I thought such a thing was impossible in the Lone Star State:

Bush has stated that "there is no doubt in my mind that each person who has been executed in our state was guilty of the crime committed" and that all of his state's condemned prisoners have had "full access to the courts ... and to a fair trial."

http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/10/13/texas/index1.html

Kids-in-adult-bodies say the darndest things, don't they?

[1984 Was Not a Shopping List]

There's a saying, of which we usually hear only the first half: a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, but a liberal is a conservative who's seen what the inside of a prison looks like.

[Ed Darrell]

Bush is a twit. Texas fought for two years to get the right to execute an innocent man, taking the case to the Supreme Court. Texas won the right, and an innocent man was executed. This was a year before Bush took office. If he doesn't know this fact about Texas jurisprudence, he's unqualified to sit in the governor's chair . . .

This story is one MORE case of Texas' having executed an innocent person.

[bob crane]

truly horrible.

...again.

[gordo]

Most troubling to me is the fact that Ann Richards was the one who signed this death warrant, just as Douglas Wilder signed Roger Coleman's warrant in 1992. It took Republican George Ryan to wake up to the fact that if a state has the death penalty, innocent people will inevitably be executed. Too many Bill Clinton-style Democrats rush to execute as many people as they can, just to prove how tough they are.

[gordo]

Then again, a 2001 poll found that 60% of Americans cite "closure" as a valid reason for supporting the death penalty. It may be unjust to kill an innocent person, but maybe that's balanced by the theraputic value. Or maybe the "closure" argument is complete crap.

[cfrost]

My guess is that most readers of the Houston Chronicle will figure that you've got to break a few eggs to make an omlette. Many of them would doubtless favor taliban style public executions in stadiums: maybe during half time at the next whatever-the-fuck-bowl.
Pathetic.

[cfrost]

Just as I hit the post button, I remembered that the Texas prison folks had a website that listed the last meals of executed prisoners. I learned about it from the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel’s website. It was one of those articles in which foreigners comment on the bizarre customs of Americans as though we were some screwy New Guinea hill tribe. And who can blame them? Unfortunately for those of us with a morbid streak, or fortunately for those of us with an ounce of taste, the site has been taken down.
http://www.thememoryhole.org/deaths/texas-final-meals.htm

[sightunseen]

and how many more innocents have been murdered not only in Tx but in other states that support this ?

[Mnemosyne]

This very nearly happened to Rolando Cruz in Illinois. I wouldn't be surprised if the Cruz case was one of the ones that turned George Ryan against the death penalty.

The worst part of the Cruz case: while the police were perjuring themselves and the prosecution was pressuring witnesses, the real killer raped and murdered two more little girls.

[Mnemosyne]

Oh, in case you don't follow the link, Cruz was eventually exonerated and pardoned and the cops who perjured themselves were prosecuted.

But three little girls are still dead because the cops were more interested in putting Cruz in jail than they were in finding out who really committed the crime.

[David Elliot]

I think it is great that bloggers are picking up and commenting on the Ruben Cantu story. This is the strongest evidence yet -- in what we call the "modern era," since executions resumed in the 1970s -- that an innocent person has been put to death.

David Elliot
Abolish the Death Penalty
http://www.deathpenaltyusa.blogspot.com

[Flamethorn]

If I were accused of a capital crime and sentenced to decades in prison, I'd rather just die and get it over with.

[S.R. Prozak]

We have seven billion too many people. Kill as many as you can.