‘Murder by perjury’ in Cantu case?
Pitts: Did Texas kill an innocent in our name?
Before being elected district attorney, Reed was the state district judge who denied Cantu’s final death sentence appeal in 1988 and then set Cantu’s August 1993 execution date. She was not the trial judge.Reed now says she doesn’t remember the case and had only minimal judicial involvement. In an indication of priorities, Reed told the Chronicle she’s more concerned about whether a murderer remains at large and whether perjury that led to a wrongful execution occurred. While those issues are important, equally critical is an examination of the facts in order to change the way Texas courts handle the application of the death penalty.
There are no winners in the sad saga of Ruben Cantu. An innocent man may have been executed by the State of Texas. Aurelia Cantu has lost a son. Jose Moreno has to live with the reality that he identified Cantu as the shooter, because, though he knew Cantu wasn’t guilty, because police pressured him into identifying Cantu as the responsible party. The Bexar County DA’s office and San Antonio police participated in to the execution of an innocent man by pressuring Moreno in order that they could carve another notch on the courthouse door. The State of Texas dutifully executed Cantu in the name of justice and protecting good, God-fearing Texans.
Now, twelve years after Cantu’s execution/state-sanctioned murder, it appears that things about to become much stranger than anything poor Jose Moreno could have imagined in his worst nightmare. Here in Texas, no good deed goes unpunished.
Juan Moreno could end up making Job look lucky.
First, at the age of 19, he was shot nine times and left for dead in a 1984 robbery in San Antonio. A companion of Moreno was shot to death during the robbery.
Then, Moreno says, he was pressured by police into identifying the wrong man after repeatedly saying it wasn’t him.
That man, Ruben Cantu, was executed based on Moreno’s testimony in a 1985 trial.
Now Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed says if her investigation supports Moreno’s contention that the wrong man was executed, she may file charges against him.
For perjury? No. The three-year statute of limitations ran out a long time ago.
For the murder of Ruben Cantu.
Murder has no statute of limitations.
I can understand DA Reed’s position, but she’s missing the point completely. If she is to charge Moreno with murder than what of those role of those in law enforcement who applied so much pressure to Moreno that he felt he had no choice be to accede to fingering Moreno as the shooter? If Moreno is guilty of murder, there should be more than a few law enforcement officials indicted for murder as well, for these are the people truly guilty of the state-sanctioned murder of Ruben Cantu? And what of Reed’s own role in this fiasco? If Moreno is to face murder charges, there are plenty of folks who should be indicted with him.
The case of Ruben Cantu represents everything that is wrong with the death penalty in Texas. Given that most of those executed are poor, African-American, or Hispanic, do we somehow think that scarificing these “less valuable” lives are a fair price to be paid for the greater good of real or perceived greater public safety?
What truly disturbs me about this case is that no reasonable person can assume that this is the first and only time an innocent person has been executed in Texas. If we proceed from this assumption, which is not an unreasonable place to begin, the question becomes how many innocent people has Texas executed/murdered, and what is an “acceptable margin of error”? IS the occasional execution/murder of an innocent person to be viewed as simply a cost of doing business? Does the term “margin of error” have any place in the discussion of capitol punishment? Does the occasional state-sanctioned (oops) murder of an African-American, a Hispanic, or a poor White person count for less because they are lower and the social and economic food chain?
DA Bell is barking up the wrong tree. Instead of trying to kill the messenger, perhaps she needs to look a little closer to home. If Juan Moreno is guilty of murder, then there are surely those within Bell’s sphere of influence who are even more guilty. If something resembling justice is to be done after all these years, shouldn’t the DA be going after those truly guilty? She might start by looking in the mirror.
