Carlos DeLuna

The case of Carlos DeLuna is getting new attention. He was an innocent person executed by the State of Texas. The Columbia University Law Review has created an extraordinary website detailing the case. Be sure to visit their website.

Back in 2006, Texas Moratorium Network’s Scott Cobb wrote the section on capital punishment in the Texas Democratic Party platform and included Carlos DeLuna as an example of an innocent person executed to show why Texas needs a moratorium on executions.

The Atlantic also has a very long article on the case:

On the day, sooner than you think, when the United States Supreme Court again outlaws the death penalty, the justices will almost certainly cited the DeLuna case as one of the prime reasons why. It is not the first recent instance where smart, reasonable people have compellingly proven that an innocent man was executed in Texas. And it’s certainly not the first time we’ve read the details of a capital case where the work of government officials — police, prosecutors, judges — was so profoundly and consistently shoddy.

But there is something especially compelling about the DeLuna case. It’s what drew Possley to it. It’s what haunted the lone eyewitness for all these years. A legendary case of injustice deserved — it needed — a legendary treatment. And it got one. No one can ever say again with a straight face that America doesn’t execute innocent men. No one. Barry Scheck told me Friday: “If Carlos DeLuna were still alive, [the Article] would form the basis of a habeas petition that would have exonerated him.”

A new documentary on the case of Cameron Todd Willingham entitled “Burned” is nearing completion.

According to the filmmakers, all the footage has been shot and the film is in post-production. “It’s coming along well! We’ve partnered with the Arson Research Project and are creating a transmedia project”, the filmmakers told us on Twitter. You can follow the project on Twitter @projectBurned.

For more information, you can also visit the website at http://www.burned-documentary.org/.

For more on the case of Todd Willingham, visit http://www.camerontoddwillingham.com.

 From the project’s website:

Burned is a new documentary by Jessie Deeter about Cameron Todd Willingham who was executed in 2004 for the arson deaths of his three young daughters, despite clear forensic evidence that the fire was not arson.

Currently, we have completed filming and are beginning post-production work with a target date of late spring 2011 for a rough cut. We’re grateful for the grants and donations we have received, but we still have some distance to cover – and we can’t get there without you.

You can help by:
* Making a donation
* Sharing our quest via email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
* Asking at least one other person to do the same

Your contribution will help us with costs of editing, music, web site, sound design, festivals submission, color correction, office space and much more.

Please join us in our work to bring this story to the screen. Please spread the word…every dollar and every mention helps.

Sign up for the project’s mailing list to keep informed about upcoming screenings and other events.

Beunka Adams was executed by lethal injection tonight in Huntsville. Today’s execution was the 482nd in Texas since 1982 and the 243rd since Rick Perry became Governor.

From AP:

Adams, 29, said just before he was executed that he was “very sorry for everything that happened,” according to Jason Clark, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

“I am not the malicious person you think I am,” Adams said in front of witnesses including Vandever’s family members and one of the surviving victims, according to Clark. “I was real stupid back then. I made a great many mistakes. What happened was wrong. I was a kid in a grown man’s world.”

Prosecutors said Adams and his co-defendant, Richard Cobb, who was also sentenced to death, had robbed two other people at gunpoint before the convenience store incident.

Adams’ case focused attention on the question of whether low-income defendants receive adequate legal representation when they are on trial for their lives.

Adams filed a flurry of motions asking various courts to overturn his death sentence on the grounds that he received inadequate legal representation at his trial.

A federal court ordered his execution blocked earlier this month, but a federal appeals court overruled that decision, and ordered the execution to be carried out. The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday denied his request for a stay of execution.

Adams used what has become known as the “death is different” argument, claiming that people facing capital punishment are entitled to greater latitude in challenging evidence, the right to more competent legal counsel, and broader ability to challenge lower court rulings than inmates who are facing imprisonment only.

The “death is different” argument was rejected by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, citing several U.S. Supreme Court precedents.

Texas has executed more than four times as many people as any other state since the United States reinstated the death penalty in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Texas executed 13 people in 2011.

Lawyers for Beunka Adams are appealing now to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop Thursday’s execution after the previously issued stay was lifted by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Beunka Adams has been granted a stay of execution by a U.S. District Judge:

From the Houston Chronicle:

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A 29-year-old convict set to die this week for a fatal shooting during the robbery and abductions at an East Texas convenience store has won a reprieve from a federal judge.

Beunka Adams was set for lethal injection Thursday evening in Huntsville for the September 2002 slaying of 37-year-old Kenneth Vandever outside Rusk. Vandever and two women were abducted during the robbery, one of the women was raped, and all three were shot. The women survived.

Lawyers for Adams convinced U.S. District Judge Michael Schneider in Texarkana, Texas, that the execution should be delayed until the courts review allegations that Adams had poor legal help in the early stages of his appeals.

It’s unclear if the Texas Attorney General’s office would or could appeal Monday’s ruling.