One of the strongest arguments against the death penalty is the
frightening chance of executing an innocent person. Columbia University
law professor James Liebman said he and a team of students have proven
that Texas gave a lethal injection to the wrong man.
Carlos De Luna was executed in 1989 for stabbing to death a gas
station clerk in Corpus Christi six years earlier. It was a ghastly
crime. The trial attracted local attention, but not from concern that a
guiltless man would be punished while the killer went free.
De Luna, an eighth grade dropout, maintained that he was innocent
from the moment cops put him in the back seat of a patrol car until the
day he died. Today, 29 years after De Luna was arrested, Liebman and his team published a mammoth report in the Human Rights Law Review
that concludes De Luna paid with his life for a crime he likely did not
commit. Shoddy police work, the prosecution's failure to pursue another
suspect, and a weak defense combined to send De Luna to death row, they
argued.
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