Posted on 12/01/2005 4:37:48 AM PST by Ninian Dryhope
The ex-judge looking into innocence claim of man put to death calls her role minimal
SAN ANTONIO - The San Antonio district attorney who promised Wednesday to vigorously investigate the innocence claim of Ruben Cantu was a player in the case well before his 1993 execution.
During her days as a Bexar County judge, Susan Reed rejected Cantu's death-sentence appeal in 1988 and later set his execution date, records show.
But Reed, who was elected district attorney in 1998, said she does not remember Cantu and considers her previous involvement minimal and mostly procedural. She said her staff has already requested thousands of pages of court, jail and police records related to the case.
Cantu, 17 at the time of the murder-robbery in San Antonio, was executed Aug. 24, 1993.
In an interview with the Houston Chronicle on Wednesday, Reed emphasized that her office is just beginning its investigation into claims of Cantu's innocence. But she said she is more concerned about "whether there is a murderer out there and whether there is someone who committed perjury that led to someone being executed."
Her review was prompted by a Chronicle investigation last month that detailed how the lone eyewitness and the convicted accomplice to the November 1984 murder both now say that Cantu was never at the crime scene.
A third man, who never testified at Cantu's trial, has claimed that Cantu was in Waco.
Cantu was convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 for the robbery and shooting death of Pedro Gomez. Juan Moreno, another victim who barely survived the robbery, was the key witness against Cantu at trial.
Moreno, who still lives in San Antonio, has said that police persuaded him to identify Cantu as the killer. Cantu's co-defendant, David Garza, then 15, is in prison in Beaumont on an unrelated case and has named another San Antonio man as the killer.
A third man, Eloy Gonzales of San Antonio, said he and his brothers were in Waco with Cantu at the time of the crime.
Reed's office so far has not interviewed those three men, in part because lawyers still are collecting and reviewing records, Reed said.
'Public has a right to know' Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, called Reed's decision to review the case a great "initial step." But he also has asked the governor to take the case to the Governor's Criminal Justice Advisory Council.
"There ought to be an independent review in addition to the fine work coming out of the prosecutor's office," said Ellis, who is a member of the advisory council. "The public has a right to know if the state of Texas has made a mistake in the administration of the death penalty."
Ellis is among several lawmakers and advocates who have called for action by the Criminal Justice Advisory Council, though the group has not previously tackled such a case.
"The reality that Texas may have executed an innocent man should shock us all into action," Ellis said in a statement Wednesday. "If the facts we now have are accurate, this was a catastrophic failure of the entire Texas criminal justice system and demands investigation."
Kathy Walt, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry, said the committee is not "set up to look at individual cases." Walt said Perry is unlikely to act until Reed makes findings of fact.
Reed, who also serves as president of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association, said she thinks such investigations can and should be conducted by local prosecutors.
"I think the responsibility lies with the jurisdiction and the person elected in that jurisdiction."
Legal ethicist Robert Schuwerk, a University of Houston law professor and co-author of The Handbook of Texas Lawyer and Judicial Ethics, said Reed's former role as a judge should not disqualify her as a fact-finder. In fact, it might motivate her to dig deeper.
"It isn't automatically a conflict," Schuwerk said. "She could have slammed the door on it. Basically, if I were a judge and I had ruled that somebody deserved to die and then it came out that maybe there was evidence suggesting that he wasn't there or he was innocent, I sure would want to get to the bottom of it."
Reed's role Reed's involvement as a judge in the Cantu case came after she took the place of former Bexar County District Court Judge Roy Barrera Jr., who presided over Cantu's 1985 death-penalty trial.
As Bexar County's 144th District Judge in 1988, Reed reviewed Cantu's writ of habeas corpus, which argued that a sentence of death constituted cruel and unusual punishment since Cantu was a juvenile at the time of the offense and testimony from the lone eyewitness in the case was unreliable.
In the interview Wednesday, Reed said she rejected those arguments without hearing testimony because, she said, they had been raised and rejected by other courts. "The court having reviewed the writ of habeas corpus filed by Ruben Cantu and having considered the allegations is of the opinion the writ should be denied and no need for an evidentiary hearing exists," reads the ruling, signed by Reed on Jan. 6, 1988.
Later, at a hearing, Cantu personally told Reed, "I'm not guilty," according to an old San Antonio Express-News brief. Reed said she does not remember that brief encounter.
Deep digging urged Nancy Barohn, an attorney who represented Cantu during his appeal, said she hopes that Reed's staff digs beyond the paperwork.
"If she just gets the file and takes a look, it can't be much different from the file" she reviewed as judge, Barohn said.
Sam Millsap Jr., a lawyer who was the elected Bexar County district attorney in 1985, said it was not surprising that Reed ruled against Cantu as a judge in 1988 since "none of the things (recently) discovered were available to her."
But Millsap also urged a more thorough review.
"The state of Texas needs to be looking at the fundamental question of whether or not the system is reliable enough to produce the level of certainty that ought to be required in civilized society before people are executed."
Perry had no comment about the Cantu case in a recent press conference. But Walt said she thinks Cantu's case was not unique and that innocence questions also have been raised about other death row cases in Texas, such as that of Leonel Herrera of Edinburg, executed in 1993.
"We've had these kinds of confessions before in other death-penalty cases," Walt said last Tuesday. "It's happened before."
Staff writer Lisa Falkenberg contributed to this report.
lise.olsen@chron.com
I posted the previous two stories in Free Republic.
Did Texas execute an innocent man? Houston Chronicle ^ | Nov. 19, 2005 | LISE OLSEN
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1525356/posts
Executed man's co-defendant says years of guilt have led him to try to clear his friend's name Houston Chronicle ^ | Nov. 21, 2005 | LISE OLSEN
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1525982/posts
Lise Olsen is apparently a liberal lobbyist against the death penalty masquerading as an investigative reporter. In her last assignment up in liberal Seattle, at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, she also campaigned against the death penalty:
“Lise Olsen is being recognized for her series "Uncertain Justice," about the death penalty in Washington. She spent nearly a year tracking WSBA records, judges' reports on death-penalty cases, and interviewing serial killers for a review of two decades of capital punishment in Washington. Based largely on her findings, the Washington State Supreme Court revamped its rules for lawyers in death-penalty cases in June of this year. Starting next year, every death-penalty lawyer used in Washington cases must be certified as qualified by a Supreme Court subcommittee. Ms. Olsen's series earned awards from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Thurgood Marshall Award, sponsored by the Death Penalty Information Center.”
http://www.wsba.org/media/releases/2002/olsen.htm
It is obvious that the Houston Chronicle brought her to Texas to undermine support for the death penalty in Texas. I find it despicable that the Houston Chronicle is running what should be at best an opinion column as breaking news. They have put all these stories on the front page and as top stories.
"But she said she is more concerned about "whether there is a murderer out there and whether there is someone who committed perjury that led to someone being executed."
Me too.
Witness who recanted testimony tells Cantu's mother he is sorry
She forgives him; advocacy groups call for changes to prevent wrongful capital convictions
By JOHN W. GONZALEZ
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle San Antonio Bureau
SAN ANTONIO - Juan Moreno, who has recanted testimony that resulted in the execution of Ruben Cantu in 1993, said Wednesday he conveyed his remorse to Cantu's mother in an emotional encounter this week.
Aurelia Cantu responded by assuring Moreno that he was a blameless "victim of the system" like her son, Moreno's lawyer said.
"I told her I felt bad. I let her know how sorry I felt all this time," Moreno said in Spanish during a news conference arranged by his defense attorney, Gerry Goldstein.
Cantu's death sentence for a 1984 murder in San Antonio was based primarily on what Moreno now says was a faulty identification given under intense police pressure.
"The entire system — from beginning to end, from left to right — failed," Goldstein said. "The fact that Juan has come forward is testament to his courage and to the moral guilt that he has felt," Goldstein added.
Representatives of the League of United Latin American Citizens and Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund joined Goldstein in calling for reforms to avert miscarriages of justice.
"We believe executing an innocent person is the most serious error a criminal justice system can make, and we believe it happened in the case of Ruben Cantu," MALDEF lawyer Luis Figueroa said.
"The wrongful execution of Mr. Cantu revealed a criminal justice system that is eager to hold someone accountable but reluctant to fully investigate the case," he said.
Goldstein and Figueroa attacked what they portrayed as a widespread perception that the only way to challenge a capital conviction is with DNA evidence.
They said many cases don't involve DNA and that false confessions and unreliable eyewitnesses figure prominently in many wrongful convictions, including Cantu's.
"If we don't fix the problem, it will continue to happen. Let's not make Ruben Cantu's death meaningless," Figueroa said.
john.gonzalez@chron.com
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/3494904.html
This another non-story story by the Houston Chronicle pushing the anti-death penalty line.
"advocacy groups call for changes to prevent wrongful capital convictions"
Yes, such as trying to get rid of the death penalty.
I'm more concerned about the waste of taxpayers money.
If this woman want's to keep innocent people from being executed, she should stand in front of an abortion clinic.
If there is doubt about the conviction, then by all means check it out. The last thing Pro DP wants is an innocent put to death.
"The last thing Pro DP wants is an innocent put to death."
Cantu is not innocent. He committed the murder that he was executed for. Cantu was a long time gang member.
Cantu also shot an undercover cop playing pool in a local pool hall. By chance, the cop did not die after being shot five times, but it was certainly Cantu's intention to murder the cop. The cop who was shot said that Cantu shot him without warning and for no reason. The cop was in plain clothes when he was shot and Cantu did not know he was a cop when Cantu shot him. Cantu admitted to friends and family that he shot the cop.
Sorry - I didn't realize that my arguments had been shredded, guess I'm not very bright! I tried to respond to all people who dissagreed with me - sorry if I missed a few - there were many!
As for it being an emotional attachment to no death penalty, I'd have to disagree. I thought I'd done a very good job of explaining my position on why I am against the death penalty. I suspect that you could state my position very clearly. You may not agree with it but it is not an unreasonable position to have. An emotional attachment would be clinging to a position with no basis for that position - this clearly is not the case.
Reed was widely considered the most "law and order' judge on the bench in San Antonio.
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