#39
Post
by Appa23 » Tue Oct 16, 2007 8:19 am
BiT, I do not know how much you have looked at capital cases, but I get the feeling that you think that they are like the high-profile ones that you see in the news or see dramatized on telvision. Many of these cases boil down to the only evidence being an eyewitness or a coreced confession, with no physical evidence or anything else linking the defendant to the crime. However, it is not hard to get a jury to convict, despite the lack of evidence, based on the severity of the murder. "Someboyd should die for this, and this is the guy in front of us."
You should look at Cantu's case. The prosecution's entire case was based on the testimony of a surviving eyewitness of the robbery/murder, Juan Moreno. There was nothing else linking Cantu to the crime. He was known to Moreno, as Cantu lived across the street from the housing construction where the murder took place. Twice, police put a photo array in front of Moreno that included Cantu, and Moreno never indicated that Cantu was one of the two teens who shot him. Over four months after the event, Cantu got into a shooting altercation at a bar with an off-duty cop (who pulled a gun on Cantu and then was shot). According to Moreno, after this event, police again picked him up and iquestioned him about Cantu being involved in the murder/robbery. There also may have been some discussion of Moreno status as an illegal alien. Moreno fingered Cantu, as he felt pressured to do by the cops. Years later, Moreno recanted his testimony.
Sam Millsap, who was the District Attorney presiding over the Cantu case, reversed his lifelong support for the death penalty because of the evidence that Cantu was not there the night of the murder. In a December 2005 interview with the San Antonio Express-News, Millsap expressed that, "It is troubling to me personally. No decision is more frightening than seeking the death penalty. We owe ourselves certainty on it." He went on to say that if Cantu was innocent, that means the person who committed the murder remains free and that "the misconduct by police officers could be addressed today."
Of course, the current Bexar County (San Antonio) District Attorney, Susan Reed, sees no reason to look into the polcie misconduct. Rather, she wants to pin the blame for killing an innocent man on Juan Moreno. In the Houston Chronicle expose on how the State of Texas killed an inocent man, Reed indicated that she may bring homicide charges against Juan Moreno, prosecuting him for murder by perjury. Interestingly, Reed formerly was the judge who rejected Cantu's appeal in 1988, and also set his execution date in 1993. Needless to say, there have been some questions regaridng how motivated she is to have a full investigation into the innocence of Cantu.