In ​“Last Words From Death Row: The Walls Unit,” Norma Herrera recounts the tribu­la­tions she and her fam­i­ly suf­fered as they worked to free her broth­er, Leonel, from death row in Texas. The book doc­u­ments court events and press cov­er­age of the case and cap­tures the fam­i­ly’s efforts to assist Leonel pri­or to his exe­cu­tion in 1993, four months after the U.S. Supreme Court held in Herrera v. Collins that, in the absence of oth­er con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tions, new evi­dence of inno­cence is no rea­son for fed­er­al courts to order a new tri­al.

Last Words from Death Row reveals that Leonel was a dec­o­rat­ed war vet­er­an with post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der when he was sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of two police offi­cers. He was near­ly beat­en to death after his arrest for the crime. He was quick­ly sen­tenced to death by a jury that large­ly con­sist­ed of local police depart­ment employ­ees or those close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with them. As they fought to prove their clien­t’s inno­cence, Leonel’s appel­late attor­neys intro­duced eye­wit­ness evi­dence that Leonel’s broth­er had actu­al­ly com­mit­ted the crime and that local police offi­cials were part of an effort to hide the truth. One of Leonel’s attor­neys, Robert McGlasson, not­ed, ​“Indeed, nev­er in my almost ten years of death penal­ty prac­tice had I seen such extra­or­di­nary evi­dence demon­strat­ing not just my clien­t’s inno­cence, but the extreme degree of gov­ern­ment involve­ment in deceit and crim­i­nal involve­ment.”

In her book, Norma Herrera ful­fills her broth­er’s final wish before his exe­cu­tion. He asked her to tell his sto­ry. He lat­er pro­claimed to the wit­ness­es at his exe­cu­tion: ​“I am inno­cent, inno­cent, inno­cent. I am an inno­cent man, and some­thing very wrong is tak­ing place tonight.”
(Nightengale Press, 2007). See Books and Innocence.

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