...comes from Jim Marcus, director of Texas Defender Services, which represents people on death row during their appeals.
Speaking about the wrongful execution of Ruben Cantu, Marcus says: "When you have an airplane crash the FAA gets together and commits to an independent investigation to figure out where the failing was."
The Houston Chronicle is reporting that the district attorney of Bexar County, where Cantu was convicted and sentenced to death, has instructed her staff to gather up all of the county's files on Cantu. While she is stopping short of a formal investigation, she did tell the Chronicle she will examine the record in the case "to try to get my mind around it."
Rick Casey, a Chronicle columnist suggests in a column today that a posthumous pardon for Cantu might be appropriate. "The state of Georgia did that earlier this year in the case of a black woman executed for killing a white man in 1944," Casey writes. "The evidence supported her contention, unsuccessful in the racial atmosphere of that time, that it was self-defense."
That's the least we can do. And yet, it is probably more than Texas will do.
To read Casey's column, go here: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/casey/3479463.html
(Sorry. My hyperlink thingy doesn't seem to be working today.)
To read a comprehensive Houston Chronicle editorial, go here:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/3479155.html
Meanwhile, I have to ask: Where is the San Antonio Express News' coverage of this sorry episode? It happened in their backyard but all I have seen so far in their paper is an Associated Press pickup of the Houston Chronicle series. Have I missed something -- or did they?
If anyone cares to send the newspaper a letter to the editor, you can email it to letters@express-news.net
2 comments:
I ran across another article about a person in Texas who may have been innocent and executed. His name was Cameron Willingham and he was executed in Texas in 2004. The article was in The Chicago Tribune.
I think whether you are for or against the death penalty, there is a developing consensus that the way it is administered in Texas puts innocent people at risk of execution.
Here is a link to send an email to the Texas Legislature and Governor Perry of Texas urging them to enact a moratorium on executions, before any more innocent people are executed.
I read that same article. This is the very thing that to me justifies abolishing the death penalty. There is no justice where innocent men are put to death while men who are guilty go free.
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