Wrong Carlos in Texas dies.....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/15/carlos-texas-innocent-man-death

The above link shows how the State of Texas put an innocent man to death when all the indicators were that it was for a crime he can't have committed. From the fairly brief details some things stand out starkly, a man by the name of Carlos DeLuna was found 40 or so minutes after a fatal knife attack robbery on a woman Wanda Lopez at Shamrock service station. Eye witnesses saw the assailant running away to the North and later Carlos DeLuna was found hiding under a car to the east. Carlos Deluna when arrested said he had panicked and run following witnessing the attack by a man he knew and who he'd been drinking with that night, Carlos Hermandez.

As the picture in the link shows the precints of the killing were blood covered, with blood raised high on the walls. Yet Carlos DeLuna had absolutely no blood on him. That had to be a big warning, as would finding that he did not have any injuries or blood smears. But Carlos DeLuna had that story that he freely told police, how he'd been drinking with Carlos Hermandez, a notorious local and at a point, after Carlos Hermandez had been away for a while buying something, he went looking for him. Perhaps that is the only weakness in Carlos DeLuna's story but it didn't constitute murder or involvement in the murder that witnesses described as a lone assailant. De Luna said he found Hermandez inside the Shamrock service station wrestling with a woman behind the counter and ran, later saying he ran because he was afraid. When he heard the sounds of police sirens he panicked and hid under a pick-up truck where the police found him and were sure they had their man.

Reading the link it's easy to see by the photo of the police head investigator standing on evidence within the crime scene at the Shamrock that the case was being treated as cut and dried, just another file to number and eventually close. Investigators were finished with the crime scene within 2 hours and neglected some basic policing and exhibit gathering. Despite that blood was 3 ft high on the walls and their suspect was clean of blood, or a weapon, or injuries, the crime scene investigators 'boxed on' with was to them, at least,  an ordinary everyday robbery gone wrong for both the victim and the 'assailant' that had been arrested within 40 minutes and his fate sealed. People could have been off shift early that night, thinking already what it might be they would do. No scrappings were taken from under Wanda Lopez's nails, no evidential items found on the floor were dna tested, a shoe print in Wanda Lopez's blood on the floor was not even mentioned. Everything in the investigation indicated that the officers knew evidence was not needed because they had their man already in custody.

Even though DeLuna had identified Hermandez it seems no effort was made to find him, despite Hermandez being a notorious figure, parolee and known user of weapons. Even though the case by virtue of the poor, or non-existant forensic, another named assailant, was weak Carlos was convicted primarily on the evidence of a single witness who would later, after Carlos was dead, admit that he had trouble telling one Hispanic from another. Carlos's own public defender, suffering the same malaise that came over the entire case, said that it was probable Hermandez never existed. So running from a crime scene, an unconvincing eye witness, and Carlos was on death row still telling the same story until he was put to death. No body listened to Carlos, or if they pretended to. it seem far too obvious that an innocent man doesn't flee the crime scene, so obvious that any evidence showing doubt didn't matter. After that folks get tired, a petty crim, just another face, just another saying 'hey man I didn't do it, it was Carlos Hermandez the knife man not me,' it seems, at least in this case  everyone went to sleep. No Judge or police official cared about it, no prosecutor or defence attorney, it was just another day of feeding a perfect justice system in order that it might consume a life and somehow put things back in order on a balance sheet in the sky.

But Texas took the wrong Carlos. The right Carlos was to beso  inconspicuous that he was arrested a 'mere' 39 times and spent his entire adult life on parole, in the view of Law Professor James Liebman and his students who spent almost 5 years poring over the case, because he was a police informer - so not only known to the police but used by them to put others, on the word of Hermandez - who until he died would freely admit having killed Wanda Lopez, into prison. As the link shows Hermandez was found in just a single day after Liebman commissioned a private investigator to see if he could locate him. One day to find a man that the police and prosecutors said didn't exist, but who in fact at times worked with police and prosecutors on other cases where Hermandez freedom was brought by informing.

There are a lot of comparisons I could draw between this case and that of David Bain particularly about the premature arrest and the lack of diligence in investigating both the crime scene or looking for another suspect, if only to completely rule them out, but the point is more to complicity of a false conviction and what happens afterwards. Was Police Detective Escobedo complicit in a crime whereby the state of Texas put an innocent man to death? How is the quality of that investigation compared to an attempt to pervert the course of Justice, will she be brought to task for rubber stamping a death warrant by being photographed standing on exhibits in the death scene that were not properly gathered or even tested? If the people of America, like those of New Zealand, if the investigators and the lawyers and the Bench take little or no interest in what are seen to be the dynamics of injustice, if they don't look squarely at the culpability of those that knowingly bring injustices, and ensure that the force of the law is applied to test them, then the strains of the cruelty that sees men and women take part in overlooking or ignoring the truth will continue on and only the innocent will pay - just like Carlos DeLuna paid with his life - perhaps just like our own John Bolton.