Great article from The Guardian:
The wrong Carlos: how Texas sent an innocent man to his death | World news | The Guardian
You can read the entire book here:
Los Tocayos Carlos
It's beyond time that the death penalty was abolished.
The wrong Carlos: how Texas sent an innocent man to his death | World news | The Guardian
A few years ago, Antonin Scalia, one of the nine justices on the US supreme court, made a bold statement. There has not been, he said, "a single case – not one – in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred … the innocent's name would be shouted from the rooftops."
Scalia may have to eat his words. It is now clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit, and his name – Carlos DeLuna – is being shouted from the rooftops of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. The august journal has cleared its entire spring edition, doubling its normal size to 436 pages, to carry an extraordinary investigation by a Columbia law school professor and his students.
The book sets out in precise and shocking detail how an innocent man was sent to his death on 8 December 1989, courtesy of the state of Texas. Los Tocayos Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution, is based on six years of intensive detective work by Professor James Liebman and 12 students.
Starting in 2004, they meticulously chased down every possible lead in the case, interviewing more than 100 witnesses, perusing about 900 pieces of source material and poring over crime scene photographs and legal documents that, when stacked, stand over 10ft high.
What they discovered stunned even Liebman, who, as an expert in America's use of capital punishment, was well versed in its flaws. "It was a house of cards. We found that everything that could go wrong did go wrong," he says.
...
The groundbreaking work that the Columbia law school has done comes at an important juncture for the death penalty in America. Connecticut last month became the fifth state in as many years to repeal the ultimate punishment and support for abolition is gathering steam.
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Carlos DeLuna commented on his own ending in a television interview a couple of years before his execution. "Maybe one day the truth will come out," he said from behind reinforced glass. "I'm hoping it will. If I end up getting executed for this, I don't think it's right."
You can read the entire book here:
Los Tocayos Carlos
It's beyond time that the death penalty was abolished.