By Michelle Villarreal
Corpus Christi Caller-Times
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Carlos DeLuna, executed in 1989 for the murder of a Corpus Christi woman, was innocent, a 400-page report released Tuesday states.
The Columbia Human Rights Law Review report detailed the events of his July 1983 trial for the death of Wanda Lopez and how he was wrongly executed. Columbia Law School professor James Liebman and students conducted the study to contribute to a public debate of the death penalty, specifically arguing that it is an ineffective form of punishment, Liebman said.
The DeLuna case was chosen after Liebman did a study on courts across the country and how they handled legal error. Executions piqued his interest, and he started looking at Texas death penalty cases. “One of the very first cases we came across was the Carlos DeLuna case, who said all along that another man murdered the woman,” Liebman said.
DeLuna was convicted of fatally stabbing Lopez on Feb. 4, 1983, during the robbery of a Corpus Christi convenience store. He testified at his trial, claiming a man named Carlos Hernandez killed Lopez.
The Columbia study asserts that Hernandez committed the crime.
“On evidence we pulled together on this case, there is no way a jury could have convicted De-Luna beyond a reasonable doubt, but they could’ve convicted Hernandez beyond a reasonable doubt,” Liebman said.
After deliberating for about six hours, a Nueces County jury of seven men and five women found DeLuna guilty.
Jurors also determined it was probable DeLuna, who had been accused of attempted rape in 1982, would commit future acts of violence. DeLuna maintained his innocence until he was executed Dec. 7, 1989.
“I want to say I hold no grudges,” DeLuna said minutes before he was injected. “I hate nobody. I want my family to know I love them. I want to tell everyone on death row to keep the faith up, to keep going. Everything will be all right.”
The Columbia study, “Los Tocayos Carlos,” created a stir Tuesday when it was released, drawing criticism from the case’s lead prosecutor and one of DeLuna’s defense attorneys. Both said they never were contacted by researchers, although Liebman said he spoke with defense attorney James Lawrence twice.
Lead prosecutor Steve Schiwetz, who said he was reading the report Tuesday afternoon, said he does not understand why researchers did not speak with the people who were directly involved with the case and came to his own conclusion as to why.
“They have done a pretty good job of collecting evidence,” he said. “I’m not sure if they are great at evaluating it.”
Schiwetz said the goal of the report is to raise questions about the death penalty.
“I’m not terribly hostile to the idea, but these guys are on a mission,” he said. “We can compare it to the abolitionists and these guys didn’t bother asking for anyone else’s opinion.”
Since DeLuna’s conviction, many people have asked Lawrence if he thought DeLuna was innocent, and his response was “not 100 percent.”
Lawrence said his biggest problem with defending DeLuna was that he was facing the death penalty and still couldn’t point out who he believed was the real killer.
During DeLuna’s trial, Lawrence presented him with a photo lineup and asked DeLuna to identify Hernandez. DeLuna wouldn’t.
“We talked to DeLuna and said, ‘Which guy did it? This is your life,’” Lawrence said. “And he refused to tell us which one was Hernandez, and we kept asking why and he said he was too afraid of him.”
When DeLuna took the stand, he told jurors he didn’t do it but knew who did, accusing Hernandez. The Columbia study asserts that Hernandez later bragged of killing Lopez. The report claims DeLuna and Hernandez shared similar characteristics, and eyewitnesses couldn’t tell the difference between the two.
Hernandez died in a northeast Texas prison in 1999, according to the Columbia study.
But Schiwetz said after looking into DeLuna’s false claims of innocence, he knew the truth. “DeLuna, the wouldbe serial rapist, was the same person who killed Wanda,” he said.
Former District Attorney Grant Jones, who sought the death penalty for DeLuna, has since changed his mind about executions.
“I can’t answer the question if a mistake was made,” he said, “but if it was, then an innocent man was executed.”
While Jones declined to talk about DeLuna’s case, he said that when he was a prosecutor, he believed the death penalty was the best punishment for some crimes. He no longer believes that. “One of the benefits of our judicial system is the appeal system to correct our mistakes,” Jones said. “The problem with the death penalty is once it’s carried out and there is a mistake you can’t go back and correct it.”
The death penalty no longer serves as just punishment when attempting to determine absolute truth, he said.
“Only one person knows if Carlos DeLuna was guilty, and that is God,” he said.
Gov. Rick Perry on Tuesday declined to talk about the execution that occurred more than 20 years ago, but defended the legality of the death penalty.
“The U.S. Supreme Court has determined that Texas’ system (and other states) is just and that opinion still stands,” he said through a spokeswoman.
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