Comment on Texas executed wrong man, report claims

Texas executed wrong man, report claims Houston Chronicle Copyright 2012 Houston Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Updated 08:51 p.m., Monday, May 14, 2012 What happened next that February night in 1983 - a robbery, frenzied struggle and fatal stabbing - continues to resonate with questions about how well police, prosecutors and defense lawyers performed their jobs. On Tuesday, the Columbia Human Rights Law Review will devote its spring issue to a 400-page article asserting that the state convicted the wrong man, bypassing a potential suspect who had bragged of killing Lopez. The critique is the latest in which death penalty opponents seek to prove that Texas, with 482 executions since 1982, killed an innocent man. Steve Schiwetz, who served as lead prosecutor at the executed man's trial, has not read the journal article, but he disputed the authors' conclusions as related by a reporter. More than a given name, Carlos DeLuna and Carlos Hernandez shared darkly handsome looks and a history of substance abuse and violence against women. Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution, grew out of a 2003 student project to examine Texas capital cases in which a single eyewitness account was key to conviction. Schiwetz, who now works as a private lawyer in Corpus Christi, dismissed DeLuna's original court defense and has rebuttals for several of the assertions the authors make in the journal article. After what the journal termed a speedy on-site investigation, store workers scrubbed down the crime scene. The attorneys poorly coordinated their strategy and failed to present a single witness in the trial's punishment phase. Days after the gas station stickup, Hernandez was arrested for loitering outside a convenience store with his prized buck knife. DeLuna lied about his whereabouts before the robbery, claiming he had met a pair of female friends at a skating rink.