What's new

President Biden Must End the Federal Death Penalty | Opinion

songfeng

Member
Those were the words of Carlos DeLuna, a young Latino man who Texas executed in 1989. At trial, DeLuna said that another man—Carlos Hernandez—murdered Wanda Lopez, a single mother stabbed to death while working at a convenience store in Corpus Christi.

The prosecution told the jury that Carlos Hernandez was a "phantom" DeLuna made up. In reality, police and prosecutors knew Hernandez, knew of his history of convenience store robberies and knew he used the same kind of knife that killed Lopez to kill another young Latina woman and to nearly kill a third.
A decade ago, as a law student at Columbia University, other students and I reviewed thousands of pages of trial transcripts, government files and witness interviews to uncover the truth: The state arrested, convicted and executed the wrong Carlos. Our team even discovered a 40-minute audiotape of the police manhunt just after the murder. The tape—which police kept from the jury during the trial—showed that officers chased another man matching the description of Hernandez's clothes (but not DeLuna's) for 30 minutes before arresting DeLuna.

NEWSWEEK NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP >
Investigators' tunnel vision following their faulty arrest then led them to ignore multiple signs that they had the wrong guy. Content to convict and condemn DeLuna absent any forensic evidence linking him to the crime, police and prosecutors ignored crime scene photos our team discovered years later showing the perpetrator's bloody shoe print, which didn't match DeLuna's blood-free tennis shoes.

Instead of hard evidence, the state rested its case largely on a single eyewitness identification—testimony that is highly fallible even under circumstances far better than the nighttime, cross-ethnic identification here. Worse, DeLuna and Hernandez looked so much alike that friends and family members mistook each for the other.
Also missed by the authorities: Hernandez's own confessions to friends and family that he killed Wanda Lopez and let DeLuna take the fall—leaving Hernandez free to terrorize those very same people.
NEWSWEEK SUBSCRIPTION OFFERS >
In a new documentary about DeLuna, The Phantom, Rene Rodriguez, the lawyer for Wanda Lopez's family, explained that local officials didn't care enough about DeLuna or the victim herself to get it right: "If it involves somebody of color, they don't give a sh--. That's one less Mexican. That's the way it was back then."

The DeLuna case is not an isolated incident. The same flaws—mistaken eyewitness testimony, poor legal representation, misuse of forensic evidence, misconduct by police and prosecutors—continue today to send innocent people to prison and even death row.

根据死刑信息中心的数据,自 1973 年以来,已有 185 名死囚通过证明他们的清白而无罪。一项研究表明,在美国被判死刑的人中至少有 25 人是无辜的。鉴于执行死刑的高昂财务成本和缺乏任何有意义的威慑效果,这种错误执行的风险不能通过抵消社会利益来证明。

有色人种的可能性尤其大。加利福尼亚州 2014 年的一项研究发现,与贫穷的白人被告相比,白人陪审员更有可能将贫穷的拉丁裔被告判处死刑。在全国范围内,被判犯有谋杀罪的黑人比其他被判犯有谋杀罪的黑人无辜的可能性高 50%。无辜的非裔美国人在被无罪释放之前在监狱中度过的时间也更长。

德鲁纳 (DeLuna) 纪录片上映之际,该国正在摆脱死刑。尽管在特朗普政府结束时联邦处决了一场狂欢,但 2020 年的处决人数比近三十年中的任何一年都要少。连续六年,该国每年处决不到 30 人,判处死刑不到 50 人。
2021 年 3 月,弗吉尼亚州废除了死刑,这是南方第一个废除死刑的州。包括州长已暂停执行死刑的三个州,大多数州(26 个)加上 DC 不再使用死刑。这一趋势部分是由于人们越来越意识到错误处决的风险和现实。

在此背景下,纽约的 Innocence Project、Witness to Innocence(一个死囚组织)、现任和前任检察官、民权组织等知名团体呼吁乔·拜登总统为 46 人减刑在联邦死囚牢房。总统树立的道德榜样可能会激励其他州停止不必要地冒着因处决而失去无辜生命的风险。

只要人负责,就会有错误发生。清除联邦死囚牢房是确保美国政府不会处决像卡洛斯·德鲁纳这样的无辜者的唯一方法。
安德鲁·马克夸特 (Andrew Markquart) 是明尼阿波利斯大北无罪项目的一名专职律师,也是圣托马斯大学法学院和南达科他大学克努森法学院的兼职教授。

本文中表达的观点是作者自己的观点。
 

Top