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How Should Carlos Deluna Receive The Death Penalty?

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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 …show more content…

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 …show more content…

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

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Yet, the trial court denied the motions since those of Mexican descent were categorized as part of the class of whites or caucasians. Resulting in the court to deny these motions presented by the petitioners due to insufficient evidence of Mexican-Americans treated as a “special class” within this community. Due to the insufficient substantial evidence to prove otherwise against the accusations Hernandez was facing, he was then found guilty by an all-Anglo jury, for premeditated murder of Joe Espinosa and sentenced to life in prison.

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Fact: Joseph and Susie Hurtado was a married couple from Sacramento California. The couple became friends with a local immigrant from Chile named Antonio Estuardo. Over the course of their friendship Joseph discovered that his wife and Estuardo was having an affair. Once the defendant found out about the affair he confronted Estuardo at a bar and was arrested for battery. However, while Hurtado was awaiting trial he shot and killed Estuardo; the defendant was charged with murder.

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806 Words | 4 Pages

This case was viewed as a challenge to the jury which did not include Mexicans and the final verdict that Hernandez was guilty did not come

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Convicted murderer and former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez, who was serving a life sentence for a 2013 murder hung himself in Massachusetts prison cell on Wednesday morning, just days after he was acquitted in a separate murder case. e was discovered hanged in his cell by corrections officers at the He was discovered hanged in his cell by corrections officers at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley about 3:05 a.m. Mr. Hernandez was in a single cell in a general population unit. He hanged himself utilizing a bedsheet that he attached to his cell window. He also attempted to block his door from the inside by jamming the door with various items" a statement from the Department of Correction reads, the Boston Globe

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Wrongful convictions are not usually thought of but there is a numerous amount of people that have been wrongly convicted throughout the years. Within the US there is about 2 million people behind bars meaning that 1% or 20,000 people are in for a crime they did not commit. But however, in 2015 only 149 people were cleared of a crime they didn’t not commit. Also, recent studies have said 1 out of 25 people on death row is likely innocent. One good website that has a list and the stories of people that were wrongly convicted is innocence project.

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Another example of a false execution is in Carlos De Luna 's case, who was executed in 1989 for the stabbing of Wanda Lopez, a convenience store clerk. There were two eyewitnesses who played a key role in the conviction of De Luna. Before the murder and robbery, George Aguirre was filling up at the gas station, when he saw a man standing outside the store slide a knife with the blade exposed into his pocket and enter. The man asked Aguirre for a ride to a nightclub, but he refused and went inside the store to warn Lopez about the suspicious man. Aguirre left and Lopez called the police to describe the man.

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Even though an eye-witness told police that the man who stabbed her was wearing a gray hoodie and a flannel, when police found DeLuna hiding under a car in a different outfit, they arrested him. Later, when the witness was asked whether he was sure it was DeLuna, he said he was “about 70 percent [sure] but then added that had the police not told him that they found DeLuna hiding under a truck two blocks away that he would have been only 50 percent certain” (Montana Innocence Project). Throughout his trial, DeLuna maintained that he hadn’t committed the crime, that it had been a man named Carlos Hernandez who did it. Hernandez had been arrested 39 times prior to this incident, but even when DeLuna continuously brought him up, the police didn't look for him. The prosecution eventually argued that Hernandez didn’t exist, that DeLuna had invented him, even though the man’s criminal record was readily accessible.

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Innocent until proven guilty is a phrase the United States justice system says we abide by but in many cases this seems to falter from true. Due to various factors such as tunnel vision, faulty forensics, false confessions, improper identification, missing evidence and the list could go on; all of these reasons can lead to a biased trial and ultimately lead to a wrongful conviction. Julie Rea was a single mom convicted of the murder of her ten year old son Joel Kirkpatrick on October 13th, 1997. This twenty-eight year old mom and her son lived in a rural area in Lawrence, Illinois that was referred to as a quaint little town that very rarely saw any crime so when the news of sweet little Joel Kirkpatrick being murdered got out it sent the

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1533 Words | 7 Pages

Wrongful convictions are one of the major problems that the justice system faces. Much worse is that there are people whom the judicial system has sentenced to death for crimes they did not commit. A wrongful conviction is a terrible injustice that is magnified when an innocent person spends years in prison or death row. The number of exonerated ex-offenders is steadily rising, however growing awareness of the injustices occur every day in American courts, it helps raise profound doubts about the accuracy and fairness of the criminal justice system. Cheryle (Hayes)

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655 Words | 3 Pages

However, their hanging is definable as murder due to the premeditation of those responsible for their deaths. In regards to the crimes committed and the fact that the victims were well-loved community members, the jury felt as though these criminals’ actions merited their execution. However, if one strips the cloak of law from these citizens, the reasoning behind these hangings is incited by malice and a belief in the necessity of the deaths of these men. Consequently, in a court of law, no intentional killing is justifiable; a murder is a murder, regardless of circumstances. Nonetheless, a juror states during the voir dire examination, “Ordinarily I’m against [capital punishment].

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765 Words | 4 Pages

Beginning with Gary Dotson accused of kidnapping and raping Cathleen Cowell. She contacted the police and worked with them. telling them what happen, how the perp looked and collected evidence from her. Within a few weeks later she got called to look at mug shots, where she picked Gary Dotson photo. When asked why she had picked that photo Cathleen stated “that the police pressured her to pick the photograph, pointing out how closely it resembled the composite sketch, although police denied the allegation” (“First DNA exoneration, center on wrongful convictions: Bluhm legal clinic, northwestern Pritzker school of law,” n.d.).

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532 Words | 3 Pages

If they were to be executed based off a wrongful conviction, the justice system would never be able to reflect on their mistakes and learn from the verdict

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796 Words | 4 Pages

It took nine years for the jury to realize Bloodsworth was innocent. This shows our preamble has a flaw if people are sentencing other to jail even though they're innocent, causing the innocent to rot in jail wrongfully.

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1025 Words | 5 Pages

Back in 1796 there were more than 10 innocent people killed and today about 4.1 percent of the people executed are innocent, and that’s more than enough. I think it is un fair to families, friends and the defendant to have their life taken if they are not guilty, If the law officials cannot prove whether or not the defendant is guilty then the death penalty should be abolished. Now on the other side, executing someone who is actually guilty; I do not support this either. I strongly believe that someone who commits a capital crime and has received the death penalty deserves to suffer for the rest of their life. Democratic leaders will be the ones to change the death penalty.

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1240 Words | 5 Pages

The Boston Strangling case verdict was reached when DeSalvo confessed to committing the crimes. Although, the authorities were suspicious of DeSalvo being the criminal, they noted that he was able to recall minute and comprehensive details of all the crimes and some of the details he recalled were not of public knowledge. He was soon convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He escaped with fellow inmates and later was captured and transferred to a maximum security prison, where he was stabbed to death. A few years ago in 2001, the case was reopened and DeSalvo’s body was exhumed to obtain a DNA sample.

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