Carlos DeLuna
In 1983, Carlos DeLuna was just 20-years-old when he stumbled upon Carlos Hernandez struggling with a woman, Wanda Lopez, behind the counter at a gas station in Corpus Christi, Texas. Scared of getting in trouble with the police, Carlos DeLuna ran away from the scene. He was arrested 40 minutes later. Throughout his trial, conviction, imprisonment, and execution, DeLuna maintained his innocence and continued to tell police that Carlos Hernandez was the real killer. The police refused to believe him. Carlos Hernandez (who was related to, and looked remarkably similar to Carlos DeLuna) was never found, and no one involved with the case believed that he existed.
In 1991, four years after DeLuna was put to death, Professor James Liebman looked into the case as part of a project that involved researching the fallibility of the death penalty. He hired a private investigator who took only one day to find Carlos Hernandez and reveal a man that had a long, violent criminal record. Carlos Hernandez not only looked like Carlos DeLuna but he was also known for carrying a knife that was identical to the one that killed Wanda Lopez.
The discovery led Liebman on a long journey to find out the truth about the case. In 2012, the result of years of hard work by Liebman and his students was published; 436 pages filled with hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents and crime scene photos revealed a poorly-handled case that never gave Carlos DeLuna a chance. No usable fingerprints were taken from the scene, none of the blood at the scene was tested to see if it belonged to someone other than the victim, the fingernails of the victim were not scraped, the footprint left at the scene was not measured, and numerous other pieces of evidence, such as a cigarette butt at the scene, were not examined.
However, justice will never be served. Carlos Hernandez died of natural causes in prison in 1999 for another crime, and police continue to insist Carlos DeLuna was the killer and no posthumous pardon has been made.
