Former San Antonio District Attorney Sam Millsap, who once pro­claimed him­self a ​“life­long sup­port­er of the death penal­ty,” now oppos­es cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Millsap says his deci­sion to oppose the death penal­ty was recent­ly affirmed as evi­dence sur­faced that Texas may have killed an inno­cent man when it exe­cut­ed Ruben Cantu, a San Antonio man who was sen­tenced to die while Millsap was DA.

​“It is trou­bling to me per­son­al­ly. No deci­sion is more fright­en­ing than seek­ing the death penal­ty. We owe our­selves cer­tain­ty on it,” Millsap stat­ed in an inter­view dur­ing which he used words like ​“painful,” ​“hor­ri­ble,” and ​“haunt­ing” to cat­e­go­rize Cantu’s case. Millsap said that he used to have con­fi­dence in the death penal­ty ​“when I was in my 30s and knew every­thing.” Now, he says the rev­e­la­tions about Cantu’s case are painful to him because the case hap­pened on his watch. He said that if Cantu was inno­cent, that means the per­son who com­mit­ted the mur­der remains free and that ​“the mis­con­duct by police offi­cers could be addressed today.”

​“It’s hor­ri­ble when you find out you par­tic­i­pat­ed in what end­ed up being a bad result, espe­cial­ly when a death is involved,” Millsap noted. 

(San Antonio Express News, December 9, 2005) See Innocence and New Voices.

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