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On Dec. 7, 1989, Corpus Christi native Carlos De Luna was executed by the state of Texas for a crime he may not have been guilty of. In late June of 2006, the Chicago Tribune published a series of articles exposing the state murder of De Luna, who was charged with aggravated robbery and the murder of convenience store clerk Wanda Lopez, age 24. Prompted by James Liebman at Columbia Law School in New York, the article series (which embarrassingly was later re-produced by, and did not originate from, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times) takes an in-depth look at the inconsistencies purported by the prosecution, the washout effort on the part of the defense, and the treatment of De Luna’s claim of innocence up until the moment of his death. More importantly, the Tribune’s investigation shows that another man, Carlos Hernandez, may have been (and admittedly was) responsible for the stabbing death of Lopez. On the night of the crime, which took place at 2602 SPID in February 1983, De Luna was found four blocks away 40 minutes after the crime took place, under a pick-truck with no shirt or shoes on. His shirt and shoes, which were later recovered, proved to have not a drop of blood on them –particularly interesting for a stabbing crime. In addition, De Luna’s only ties to the scene were two eyewitnesses, both of whose testimonies were later recanted due to uncertainty, and a claim of $149.00 missing from the register, which was later reported as false. In the months following, at trial when De Luna named the murderer as Carlos Hernandez, the prosecution labeled Hernandez “a phantom”, claiming he was a figment of De Luna’s imagination. However, the co-prosecutor at De Luna’s trial and the lead detective in the case knew all too well of Carlos Hernandez’s existence, as well his bloody and violent criminal history. This legal error in itself could have been reason enough to overturn his conviction, or at least provide grounds for further investigation into De Luna’s claim of innocence. Some persons involved with the case point to a prejudice on the part of the Corpus Christi Police Department. Two weeks before Lopez’s murder, De Luna reportedly laughed about a police officer wounded months earlier and said the officer should have been killed. As for the jury, despite a lack of evidence on the part of the prosecution, their indictment of De Luna for the stabbing was reached solely with Lopez’s gruesome 911 phone call and De Luna’s failure to produce a sustainable alibi. The Tribune investigation wholly asserts that the De Luna case was mired by uncertain eyewitnesses’ testimony, sloppy police work, and negation of informational leads on the part of the prosecution, which clearly implicated Carlos Hernandez as the culprit. Seven years after being sentenced to death, after losing every appeal for clemency and spending years on death row, Carlos De Luna received a lethal injection on Dec. 6, 1989 at 12:14 pm. In a cruel display, De Luna lived an agonizing 10 minutes longer than prisoners who receive lethal injection typically do, writhing in chemical-induced agony, gasping for breath as the State of Texas stripped his life away. De Luna’s death-house chaplain, Carroll Pickett, an eyewitness to the event, was so moved by his account that he is now an anti-death penalty activist, working closely with abolition groups in and around Chicago as well as on a national basis. Pickett affirms that De Luna maintained his claim of innocence up until the moment of his execution, a feat uncommon for guilty men or women. Currently there is no mechanism under Texas state law charged with the investigation of wrongful conviction/execution cases or the compensation of family members of wrongfully executed inmates such as Carlos De Luna. Roberto Garcia is an anarchist, student, and freelance day laborer who also volunteers as Turning the Tide’s distribution manager.
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July - October 2006 
