Wrong Man Executed in Texas 1989

Wrong Man Executed

He was the spitting image of the killer, had the same first name and was near the scene of the crime at the fateful hour: Carlos DeLuna paid the ultimate price and was executed in place of someone else in Texas in 1989, a report out Tuesday found.
Even "all the relatives of both Carloses mistook them," and DeLuna was sentenced to death and executed based only on eyewitness accounts despite a range of signs he was not a guilty man, said law professor James Liebman.

Craziness, and in my opinion very scary. Sometimes it seems like there are just as many innocent men who are executed as there are guilty. There have been so many cases where a man was found innocent after already being executed. This really brings up the debate about the death penalty. What are your thoughts on this?

This happens more than people think.

In my opinion, no state should have control over a persons life, and with that, their death. How can it be civilised if the state has the power to end your life legaly, but you don't have the right to end your own life?

And anyway, just ask yourself this, what would you prefer? Death row, or rotting in prison for the rest of you life? After so many years in prison, knowing that you will never get out, i bet many people would prefer to just have it end than to carry on with such a depressing life.

reply to post by tport17

As a man who has supported the Death Penalty for my entire life, I have to say.....some of the Texas cases give me serious pause. I'm not aware of a PROVEN case yet where we executed an innocent man. However, I believe that's more about the degree of effort put into establishing the fact than the idea that it hasn't happened. Thats a truly scary thing to have to say.

I wrote most of this off to liberal bleeding hearts and do gooders who love the worst of the criminal element entirely too much, until the Innocence Project came along. They've freed entirely too many people from Death Row on absolute proof of innocence by DNA to ignore anymore.

I don't think it's a question of IF we've executed an innocent man, but how many times it's happened and HOW innocent each case was. I pray we've never actually executed a TRULY innocent man (One who didn't deserve it for a dozen other crimes they didn't actually get busted for...but a decent person who never had that coming) but I fear we can never say it hasn't happened.

I'm STILL 100% for this penalty in principle. A cop killer, child killer or contract assassin for instance, ought to get what they have coming. Smartly, as the Brits might put it. The system we're using just can't function to do this though. FAR too many core problems to be killing people.

Considering our Luciferean judges like to pick on the innocent or mentally challenged and get the guilty off lightly I would be really curtailing what they actually can with people. And capital punishment IS murder, in cold blood.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
I'm not aware of a PROVEN case yet where we executed an innocent man.

Don't quote me on this, but i watched a documentary many years ago about a guy who was awaiting his execution. The cameras followed his last days and the appeals etc, then he was executed.

Next day a woman came forward with info that would have cleared him.

I'll try and do some digging, i think it was called "Fourteen days in May" or something like that.

CX.

www.nybooks.com...

G.W. Bush was a particular nasty one, preciding over many executions.

Take, for example, the case of Terry Washington, a mentally retarded man of thirty-three with the communication skills of a seven-year-old. Washington’s plea for clemency came before Governor Bush on the morning of May 6, 1997. After a thirty-minute briefing by Gonzales, Bush checked “Deny”—just as he had denied twenty-nine other pleas for clemency in his first twenty-eight months as governor. ...

But Washington’s plea for clemency raised substantial issues, which called for thoughtful, fair-minded consideration, not the least of which was the fact that Washington’s mental handicap had never been presented to the jury that condemned him to death. Gonzales’s legal summary, however, omitted any mention of Washington’s mental limitations as well as the fact that his trial lawyer had failed to enlist the help of a mental health expert to testify on his client’s behalf. When Washington’s postconviction lawyers took on his defense, they researched deeply into his childhood and came up with horrifying evidence of abuse. Terry Washington, along with his ten siblings, had been beaten regularly with whips, water hoses, extension cords, wire hangers, and fan belts. This was mitigation of the strongest kind, but Washington’s jury never heard it. Nor is there any evidence that Gonzales told Bush about it.

Bush wrote in his autobiography that it was not his job to “replace the verdict of a jury unless there are new facts or evidence of which a jury was unaware, or evidence that the trial was somehow unfair”^2. But new information about a mentally retarded man’s battered, abused childhood that his jury never got to hear—wouldn’t that qualify?

Oops.

Yay for justice!

It happens way too often that innocent people are beaten, imprisoned and killed.

But society doesnt care. Nobody cares until it happens to them. Then it's a horrible injustice and they scream about how things need to change but still nobody else cares and their screams fall silent.

It's a sick world where a man can be put to death wrongly and the society responsible for it just carries on executing others as if nothing ever happened.

The very first time an innocent person was released from wrongful incarceration the whole system should have stopped and gone through a major overhaul.

But noooooo..... too many pot heads out there to stop the wheels of "justice" for even a second.

The absolute worst part of it is that these wrongful convictions are a product of an overzealous or even corrupt system of prosecutors and law enforcement who are more concerned with closing cases than finding the truth.

He spent more than 21 years behind bars after being convicted of murder in Cleveland. He was released in 2009 after a federal judge ruled that prosecutors failed to provide evidence that could have exonerated him.

Prosecutors still don’t think D’Ambrosio is innocent and are likely to contest the suit that could net D’Ambrosio more than $1 million.

"As woefully inadequate as I realize it is, I want to formally apologize for the system's failure to Mr. Morton and every other person who was affected by the verdict," Anderson said at a news conference on the steps of the Williamson County Courthouse, where he spoke to a dozen news cameras and twice as many reporters.

Anderson also denied allegations, made by Morton's lawyers, that he deliberately hid evidence favorable to Morton's defense before the 1987 trial.

In July 2008 the city paid $1.5 M for the death of a 14 year old boy shot a boy “accidentally” when trying to detain the boy. Former Officer Arthur Carbonneau was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and served 60 days in jail. The cops and the city refuse to apologize or admit any fault.

As news of this wrongful conviction got out, more and more security experts tried to explain to everyone involved why Amero was not the guilty party. Eventually, the judge agreed, and struck down the guilty verdict.

However, the state still has not dropped the case.

In fact, as reader Phil K lets us know, the state has no intention of dropping the case, and appears to want a new trial. No one involved in the case will explain why they won't drop it. In fact, they won't even apologize for what was clearly a wrongful prosecution in the first place. The prosecutors, the police and the school Amero worked for haven't said a word. The fact that they're planning to go through another trial over this matter suggests they still don't even realize what they did.

The whole thing top to bottom is a horrible mess that will destroy you at the drop of a hat and never once question it's motivation for doing so. A little thing like the truth cant stand in the way of "justice."

G. W. Bush told a mentally challenged teenager who killed her mother in fit, he mocked here when she was begging for her life, though her own mother was overlooking and loving her daughter forever right, I know exactly how she would have felt, and this girl needed help and counceling, you couldn't even put her in jail in Canada. Outrageous. And he mocked her.

But the drug cartel gang and the horrendous murders, those were the ones he wanted clemency on.

www.usatoday.com...

perdurabo10.tripod.com...

Mind you, Amercians elected a president who was actively pursued for the murder of a satanic cult near the Texas border. And all he had to say about it to the reporter asking was why ask him about such a trivial thing, there are more important worries, than something that "may or may not" have happened. Years ago that even made our news.

www.conspiracyplanet.com...

Christ when presented with a woman who under Judaic law should have been stoned to death said, "he who is without sin cast the first stone".

Its evil running the system and they like to torture the innocent and vulnerable.

A list of a few other wrongfully executed men.

Johnny Garrett

Wayne Felker

Thomas Griffin and Meeks Griffin

Timothy Evans

Derek Bentley

I will never believe in the death penalty. It is literally a 'waste' of human life.
The only positive that can come out of it is organ donation. But alot of people dont want a organ from a criminal of that degree for various reasons if they can help it.

If someone commits a crime worthy of a penalty as harsh as the end of your existance, then they shouldn't be killed but their human rights should be revoked. They should be tested and consigned to labour camps to be doing something that needs to be done (but not something that would take jobs away from people).

Medical experiments and tests that could benefit mankind, testing but in 'humane' ways, such as we do with animals. That way someone who has takin so much and caused so much pain, can be of use to humanity once again.

There are many uses for a human being. Many more for an animal. Thats what they should lose. Their humanity. I think that could be a better deterant then death in many cases.

Also if someone was falsly convicted, at least they would still be around to exonorate. A lot more so than someone who is dead anyway.

More and more every day I start to question...are we really evolving or is it something else. I read things like this and see the blatant disregard for human life displayed every minute of the day on MSM,YouTube,Liveleak, etc.
Then the people or institutions in place that are corrupt or being led by corrupt people who precide over law of the land seem to do what ever they want. I then think we must be DE-Evolving. It's gotta be the reason...it's just gotta be...sigh....Human beings suck!!!!

reply to post by tport17


This makes it murder. So, since the judge was responsible for this, he should serve the same penalty.

While we're all agreeing on the fact the system used to convict people and sentence them to death seems to have gaps large enough to drive trucks through, lets not go so far the other way that we're having a pity party for the worst animals the human race can produce, either. SOME on the 'Row' may be innocent. Some. The VAST majority did every thing their case file said they did and much much more no one ever caught them for.

I just hate to see a regular commiseration going on for the tiny minority (Which is enough to call the whole thing into question for DP cases in the future) when it's absolutely true to say that the system works perfectly the vast majority of the time.

It's just that....'better 10 guilty men walk free than 1 innocent man be put to death' that I agree with and can't quite get past for the way it functions now.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000

...when it's absolutely true to say that the system works perfectly the vast majority of the time.

Is it?

We know that when a person behind bars claims innocence we're not supposed to believe him because "hey, he's behind bars."

We know that most people go with public defenders who are working for the state.

We know that most people take plea bargains rather than go to trial.

What we know is there are a lot of caveats and plenty of favoritism on the side of the state.

So I cant agree that its a "truth" things worl perfectly most of the timwe.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere

Well, I'll tell ya what. I'm not saying Death Row is full of people who shouldn't be there. I'm saying the system generally works for that aspect, but the fact even one innocent (and likely far more than 1) DO make it there at all, justifies major changes or even commuting the whole thing to Life w/o Parole once again.

Given that, I'd be interested in seeing specific cases of men currently on Death Row that people believe are innocent. Not scumbag killers who someone thinks shouldn't be there because it was a cop and someone hates cops themselves so the cop killer shouldn't die. I mean a TRUE innocent man someone believes is there, right now? Looking over such a case on here could be interesting to all.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Currently? I dont know. I'd have to start looking. Is there a "currently on death row" database or something?

Likewise, not every death row case let alone every imprisonment will get attention enough to uncover the truth. Just as not every criminal will get caught. Out of how many millions of crimes committed everyday how many people are actually caught?

It goes both ways. Not every criminal is caught and not every prisoner is a criminal.

Until then we can easily go back a year or two and find people on death row who were exonerated.

Anthony Graves Protests Innocence
Anthony Graves set free

ETA: Given those millions of crimes committed everyday very few people will assume their neighbor is a criminal or up to no good even if their neighbor is a flesh-eating psychopath. Conversely nearly everyone will assume a person in prison is no good, even when exonerated, as my earlier post shows simply because they were in the system. They're looked on by many as somehow having "beaten" the system.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere

Oh indeed.. I won't disagree, in fact my main point up higher was about the Innocence Project and their full time work to free men off Death Row based on DNA evidence. It's all that changed my mind to even this degree and it's all that ever would have. It's enough to doubt the integrity of the whole system though.

I just try not to let that empathy I want to feel toward some who may really not have done the deed to earn the spot get mixed with the monsters on two legs that generally make up the population there. For every one released there is a Gacy or Manson that deserve every bit of the DP they were sentenced to. In Manson's case, sadly, he got lucky by timing of the Court decisions which had temporarily done away with Capital Punishment. Not that his parole hearings hold any meaning.

Does anyone have information regarding the 40 hours of taped audio interview with timothy mcveigh?

reply to post by tport17


is there such a thing as a lawman? if there is can he dictate u violated and are in judgement of execution? if people are going to execute the liability should be redressed or the procedure taken out because it is unfair punishment not to receive justice in light of a innocent execution.

This is a bit troubling I wonder what the tea party chrisitans have to say about this.