(cross-posted to The Agonist)
Bexar DA calls execution justified: Report says innocence claims in Cantu case lacked credibility (see the full whitewash report here)
SAN ANTONIO ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ The Bexar County district attorney concluded Tuesday that convicted killer Ruben Cantu was justifiably executed in 1993 and that “no credible information has been discovered, from any source” that supports witnesses’ innocence claims…. “The claims of Cantu’s innocence, made more than 12 years after his execution lack any credible supporting witnesses or verifiable facts,” the report asserts. Cantu was executed for the Nov. 8, 1984, robbery-murder of Pedro Gomez, a Mexican laborer who was robbed and shot to death in a house on Briggs Street in San Antonio, located across the street from where Cantu, then 17, lived with his father.
I’ve written at some length previously about Ruben Cantu, whose tragic case, regardless of your feelings about the death penalty, reveals everything that’s wrong with the system that exists here in Texas. No, it’s not frontier justice, but it’s not far from the modern equivalent.
Cantu was executed in 1993 for a murder he allegedly committed in 1984. The state killed him, everyone patted themselves on the back for a job well done, and they all lived happily ever after -until Lise Olsen from the Houston Chronicle began asking questions. It turns out that the case against Ruben Cantu wasn’t the slam-dunk that the Bexar County DA at the time, Sam Millsap, felt it was. Now even Millsap is apologizing for the rush to retribution and the sloppiness that led to the murder execution of Ruben Cantu.
Oops…our bad….
Here’s the problem with that apology though- how do you un-execute someone? Mistakes can and will be made- EXCEPT when it comes to executions. You get one shot, and that’s it. If the state murders executes someone, there’s no undoing it. If it turns out later that a mistake may have been made, whether by an overzealous DA, lying witnesses, or detectives eager for another notch on their belt…well, you can’t very well un-kill someone, can you?
Cantu was executed for the Nov. 8, 1984, robbery-murder of Pedro Gomez, a Mexican laborer who was robbed and shot to death in a house on Briggs Street in San Antonio, located across the street from where Cantu, then 17, lived with his father.
The DA’s investigation was launched in late 2005, after the Houston Chronicle reported the lone witness in the case, Juan Moreno, had recanted. Moreno survived nine bullets and provided the only trial evidence that tied Cantu to the crime.
The DA’s report, however, said that Moreno’s current statements “are vague and inconsistent” and that he is unable to provide any significant detail or positively identify the shooter.
The report released Tuesday is based on interviews with 50 people and included evidence from 35 Texas agencies.
While the report relies on conversations with former prosecutors originally involved in the case in 1985, prosecutors did not talk to the district attorney at the time of the case, Sam Millsap. Millsap has publicly called the Cantu case a “mistake” and apologized for it.
Somehow, I don’t think any apology is going to be sufficient for the Cantu family. It’s quite likely that the state of Texas executed an innocent man. Let me put it another way- the state of Texas MURDERED Ruben Cantu…and who’s going to pay for that? We already know the answer to that one, don’t we? Yep, NO ONE will be held accountable for the murder of an innocent man. Hey, it’s not like Cantu was White or anything, right??
Perhaps the worst part of this sorry episode is the spectacle of the Bexar County DA’s office investigating itself. Can any reasonable person believe that the DA’s office primary interest wasn’t finding a way to legitimize Ruben Cantu’s murder? Can any crediblity be given to any report produced by the very office that railroaded Cantu and sent him to the execution chamber? Personally, when I see that that Sam Millsap has apologized for his role in this travesty, it’s difficult for me to believe that the DA’s report is anything but a whitewash, a blatant and thinly-veiled attempt to legitimize the murder of an innocent man by the state of Texas.
Must we accept a system with so many possibilities for mistakes to be made? Must we accept that the “Greater Good” requires that we come to terms with a certain “margin for error”? And who apologizes to and makes things right for the family of Ruben Cantu, who lived through their son murdered by the state of Texas?
I’m sorry, but “oops…our bad…” just simply doesn’t cut it. I understand that no system of capital punishment can be perfect and unassailable…and that’s exactly the problem. Short of perfection, we’re forced to countenance a system that runs the risk of now and again executing an innocent person. How can anyone claiming even a shred of humanity be OK with that? It’s one thing if it’s someone else’s loved one being executed, but what if it’s your son, or brother, or husband- or YOU??
The term “margin of error” should have no place in the conversation about capital punishment. If we’re reduced to a discussion of what is an “acceptable margin of error” in order to protect the “Greater Good”, then we as a society truly have sacrificed any shred of humanity.
Ruben Cantu deserved better. So do all Texans.
