Editorials Criticize Texas Death Penalty

As evidence surfaces that Texas may have killed an innocent man when it executed Ruben Cantu in 1993, recent editorials by the Austin American-Statesman and the Dallas Morning News have criticized Texas’ death penalty and called on the state to take a closer look at its “flawed” capital punishment system.

The Austin American-Stateman wrote:

We all should remember (Ruben) Cantu’s case and the lessons it offers as the country carries out its 1000th execution since 1976 scheduled for today in North Carolina. It now appears that Cantu was right. That means that Texas executed an innocent person. He was 17 at the time of the crime.

Cantu’s case should shock even hard-core death penalty opponents. Cantu was no saint. He tangled with the criminal justice system from a young age. But he apparently didn’t rob and shoot Pedro Gomez to death in 1984. Yet in 1993, Cantu was strapped to a gurney and injected with lethal drugs for that crime.

Texas’ system is barbarous. What else can be said of a system that fails to sort the innocent from the guilty? What else can be said of a system whose checks and balances focus almost exclusively on whether the process was followed and deadlines met rather than the more important — and moral — questions of innocence and fairness?

We’re not talking about a few flaws, but rather deep inequities and defects that deny defendants the basics for a fair trial, including competent lawyers and investigators and thorough and rigorous appeals. Nowadays, the wrongfully convicted can be exonerated via DNA evidence. Thank goodness. But Cantu’s case demonstrates how the system fails when there is no DNA.

No credible eyewitnesses or physical evidence tied Cantu to the Gomez murder. Witnesses who could have provided an alibi were never questioned, and it now appears that police pressured the lone eyewitness who survived the shooting into identifying Cantu as the shooter. That eyewitness, Juan Moreno, an undocumented worker at the time who was wounded in the shooting, now says Cantu was never at the crime scene. (A separate witness now says Cantu was hundreds of miles away in Waco.) Moreno has apologized to Cantu’s mother and gone public to help clear Cantu’s name and his own conscience. Cantu’s convicted accomplice, David Garza, said Cantu wasn’t at the crime scene and has named another man as the killer.

…

We can’t bring Cantu back. But his case can yield constructive lessons about how to fix Texas’ capital punishment system.

(Austin American-Statesman, December 2, 2005)

The Dallas Morning News editorial stated:

Texas leaders have long asserted that the state’s renowned death chamber has been error-free since reinstatement of capital punishment.

Now a lone voice convincingly challenges that claim. It’s the voice of the single eyewitness who now recants testimony that sent a San Antonio man, Ruben Cantu, to the death chamber in 1993.

The Cantu execution should trouble any Texan – even capital-punishment supporters – who expects the utmost standard of justice before the state takes a life.

…

During appeals, Mr. Cantu’s attorney – a novice in capital cases – did not contact the star witness to see whether his story held together. She told the Chronicle she had no money for an investigator to interview her client’s alleged accomplice despite receiving a note from him that the “case withRuben is real messed up.”

Today, that assessment is shared by the trial judge, prosecutor, jury forewoman and defense attorney.

We couldn’t agree more.

For that reason, we endorse Sen. Rodney Ellis’ call that the governor’s Criminal Justice Advisory Council review the Cantu case to see whether it represents a tragic failure of the system.

This page has previously called for lawmakers to enact a moratorium on capital punishment to repair intolerable flaws in the system. The Cantu case is ample cause to renew that call.

Additionally, we ask the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to re-examine each of the 410 pending death-row cases to determine whether each defendant received competent, properly funded counsel. Extra scrutiny is called for in any conviction based solely on eyewitness testimony.

Texas has executed 355 people since 1982. Even one avoidable mistake is an outrage.

(Dallas Morning News, December 2, 2005)

See Innocence and Editorials.