How Should Carlos Deluna Receive The Death Penalty?

Innocent people are not killed under capital punishment. There’s no reason they should be; therefore they are not. Many people hold this belief in respect to capital punishment. If someone is executed, they must be guilty. Ignorance is bliss; however, one might consider whether or not it is the truth. The conclusion reached may not be one of satisfaction. Wrongful execution is equal to roughly (percentage) of the population. Of course, this statistic consists purely of the cases with proven innocence. Along with this, the families of the wrongly accused are also affected, as well as potential future victims of the true suspect. Once this conclusion is reached, many questions surface: If someone has already been executed, should his or her case

DeLuna was put on death row in 1983 for the murder of a store clerk because of a single eyewitness account. DeLuna maintained his innocence and claimed it had been a different Carlos by the name of Carlos Hernandez. Prosecutors insisted that Hernandez was a fabrication made up by DeLuna. Due to misidentification and DeLuna’s prosecutors, DeLuna was promptly convicted and put on death row, where he would stay until 1989. Only years after DeLuna’s execution did evidence prove that not only was Hernandez a real person, but he was also well known to police at the time of the trial for similar offenses. DeLuna is only one of many well known people who were executed while being innocent without a chance to prove their innocence. Hernandez was only convicted after the fact for a separate case. He later died in prison. Not only did Hernandez have time to commit another separate crime before he was convicted, but he died before he could face consequences for what DeLuna was executed for. Hernandez did not even face death row, while DeLuna, an innocent man, did for him. If the case had been reopened and investigated beforehand, Hernandez might not have had time to commit any other crime. He would also have had to pay for his wrongdoings which DeLuna served

The Alley family stated that they wanted the truth to be uncovered; unfortunately, until May, 2019, Sedley’s case would go unmentioned to the court. On May 1, 2019, April Alley, daughter of Sedley Alley, petitioned the Criminal Court for post-conviction DNA testing of the evidence in the case. The Alley family longed for closure and justice for years. The family wanted Sedley’s name to be cleared and for the truth to be made known to the public. “It’s too late for my father, but it’s not too late to find the truth,” April Alley told The Innocence Project. Unfortunately, Sedley’s case is only one of many cases of innocent people who have been executed. In fact, many of these cases were never tried to reopen due to the unlikelihood of the court entertaining a closed case. Closure for family stands as a strong reason for cases to be reopened and reparations to be