Cameron Todd Willingham and Carlos De Luna: Two Innocent Men Executed by the State of Texas
According to the Innocence Project, 135 death row inmates have been exonerated since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. But how many people weren't exonerated in time?
We'll never know for sure, but here are two that we know of. Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in 2004 for killing three children in a 1991 fire that had been determined, at the time, to be arson.
A report released earlier this year revealed that the original investigation had gotten it wrong; the fire was accidentally set. Willingham, who had already lost his children, was arrested and imprisoned for over a decade, then killed by lethal injection--and he had done absolutely nothing to deserve his fate.
Also innocent was Carlos De Luna, executed in 1989 for stabbing Wanda Lopez to death despite flimsy evidence. The real culprit, Carlos Hernandez, had been fingered by De Luna but got off scot-free:
Police photographs of the scene reveal (1) a shoe heel print framed in blood (the victim was barefoot when she was killed; De Luna's shoes had no blood on them); (2) a partially smoked cigarette butt near the location of the stabbing (the assailant brought a Winston cigarette pack to the counter before attacking the victim; Winston was Hernandez's brand); (3) a dark red button (Baker told police the killer was wearing a red flannel shirt; according to friends, Hernandez's "winter uniform" was a red flannel shirt); and (4) the murder weapon, an 8-inch buck knife smeared with blood ...
Absent blood, fingerprints, or other physical links to the crime, prosecutors rested their case against De Luna on three things. First was the 911 audio tape of the brutal killing. The tape incensed the jury but gave no hint of who killed Lopez except that it was a Hispanic male. Second was Kevan Baker's night-time identification of De Luna. Baker was prompted by police and shown only a single suspect, not the line-up that standard procedure required. Mug shots reveal that De Luna and Hernandez look strikingly similar. Both were 5'8" tall, 160 pounds, with wavy black hair. Shown pictures of the two men, relatives of both repeatedly mistook one for the other. The only difference was in the two Carloses' m.o. De Luna had many arrests but was never found to have possessed or used a weapon. Hernandez committed most of his crimes with a large knife.
Third, prosecutors said De Luna was a liar. De Luna identified "Carlos Hernandez" as the killer, but - argued the lead prosecutor - Hernandez was "a phantom." In fact, the untruth was the state's. Hernandez was known and notorious to police and prosecutors. Just two months after Lopez was killed, police arrested Hernandez behind a 7-11 Store at night, a knife in his pocket. Around the same time, police informants told Detective Garza that Hernandez had told them he killed Wanda Lopez. When given this information, the lead detective on the Lopez case ignored it. Still worse, one of the prosecutors at De Luna's trial admitted that he knew Hernandez personally. Only three years earlier, he had interviewed Hernandez on suspicion of knifing a young Hispanic woman to death. When arrested for that crime, Hernandez was carrying a buck knife.
In the 10 years between De Luna's execution in 1989 and Hernandez' death in 1999, he stabbed at least two other victims with the same type of knife used to stab Wanda Lopez. One of them--also a woman--nearly died from her injuries.
Proving the innocence of a suspect who has already been executed is difficult, but the Innocence Project has managed to save a few before their execution dates.
Comments
Good post. The New Yorker had a long but excellent article on Cameron Todd Willingham recently. I am concerned that the misuse of forensic analysis might be more pervasive in our criminal justice system than I had previously realized. Patricia Stallings might conceivably have suffered the fate as Mr. Willingham if Missouri had the death penalty.
The other case is new to me, but it has something in common with a case I have studied extensively, the Duke lacrosse non-rape case. The third lineup had no fillers, either.
Chris
Being a past believer in “the chair” and lethal injection I have changed my mind after the Cameron Todd Willingham case. Whether it is my recent birth of my first child or natural compassion for life, this story shook my belief to the core on our judicial and criminal system. Because all cases are done my people and a lot of people can say, “I’m only human, I make mistakes.” we should stop euthanizing in our prisoners. It was bad enough that he had to greave for his children but he had to go through a heart wrenching trail, but then to be incarcerated with people who really did do horrible crimes that they accused him of. It’s one thing to be there because of being caught with a “smoking gun” or because you confessed that it was your own doing, but to be there just because your fate lied solely on others “education” and one sided account of the incident is an entirely different situation. I wish the states and the courts would change their minds about how this is looked at and carried out. My heart felt sympathy go out to his parents, Stacy and Elizabeth Gilbert. Thank you to David Grann for writing Trail by Fire for The New Yorker, if I hadn’t read this story I would have never know about this tragedy in the American judicial system.
There is a moving documentary about the hundreds of innocent people convicted of crimes they did not commit. It is called After Innocence and is available on Netflix. Watch the extra footage, too. There is a wonderful scene of several exonerated prisoners, playing music with Pearl Jam. Many of the exonerated prisoners have not yet had their records cleared, or have received education or employment assistance, or financial compensation for the many years of false imprisonment. This can happen to any of us. Some innocent people have even been executed. If for every 1 in 1000 cases of state executions the state executes 1 innocent person, the capital punishment system is a failure, the state is the murderer of an innocence human, and capital punishment must be stopped.
The fact that modern science might have alternate explanations for some of the observations reported by the original arson investigators does not mean Willingham was innocent. For all we know the modern techniques could turn up other evidece of arson that were missed by the original investigators. Of course you didn’t consider these things because you already have an opinion about the death penalty in general that is preventing you from approaching this issue with a clear mind. Here is a hint: If the story you are reading fails to mention, or otherwise minimizes all the other evidence except the flawed evidence then your feelings are being manipulated by the author. In the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, he was what you would call a poster-boy for good fathers or husbands. He had a history of violence including against his wife and children and, during the fire, Willingham was more concerned about the fire damaging the paint on his car than he was about his dying children.
Ben Dover? Nice…..
Whatever your real name is… Can you please show a reference for these 2 comments you made? “He had a history of violence including against his wife and children and, during the fire,” and “Willingham was more concerned about the fire damaging the paint on his car than he was about his dying children.”
I have seen evidence that he was violent towards his wife (even while pregnant) but never any that showed him being violent against his children.
Willingham did move his car during the fire, but maybe he did that in order to keep it from being involved in the fire and making things that much worse.
Ben Dover,
So the fact that future investigative techniques might incriminate Mr. Willingham justifies killing him today, even though all the best evidence available now shows him to be innocent?
Wow.
So he hit his wife. That’s wrong. It happens every day in America. We don’t execute people for it. There was absolutely nothing in this man’s criminal history that would make one think he killed his children.
Willingham does not need to prove he is innocent, although this report pretty much does that. You sir, need to prove he is guilty.
If you’d like to read my post on this, go to
http://www.guerillapost.com/2009/09/executing-innocent.html